An announcement
made by the Bangkok Post highlighted the joint project of Thai Universities
that aims to provide senior citizens with a better quality of life by assisting
them in their daily activities and is capable of messaging alerts in cases of
emergency.
An elderly-friendly innovation can now
reassure family members that their senior relatives can stay safe while being
home alone thanks to the product of a joint research done by several Thai
universities in collaboration with a Japanese organisation.
The Elderly Ecological System and Services
has been implemented in the Samut Sakhon province to provide senior citizens
with a better quality of life and also assist them in their daily lives.
It is a project by the Research University
Network (RUN), led by the School of Information, Computer, and Communication
Technology; Sirindhorn
International Institute of Technology (SIIT); and Thammasat University.
The project makes use of the Minamori system developed by Japan-based Advanced
Information Valuable Service (AIVS).
The Elderly Ecological System and Services
is a pilot project that has been conducted in three hospitals in Thailand: Banphaeo
Hospital, Krathumban Hospital and Samut Sakhon Hospital.
The system is equipped with multiple
sensors that monitor the activities of the elderly. Since Line messaging is
popular in Thailand, the system was designed to connect through Line and be
able to provide regular status updates through the messaging app.
In Banphaeo hospital, for instance, the
nurses located in a different room can be notified of sudden physical changes
detected in patients lying on the bed.
The family members of elderly people, who
stay at home alone, are likewise informed through Line messaging.
Banphaeo Hospital Assistant Director
Kanokwan Sengkhamphar explained, “We nurses are not keen on technology, but the
system was designed simply in order to help us deal with it.”
After being tested for a year, the second
phase of the project now involves an implementation of 20 units of the system
at the elderly ward in Banphaeo Hospital.
20 more units are being implemented at homes where the elderly are staying
alone all the time. Many of the elderly here are suffering from Alzheimer's
disease.
The system can detect accidents, thus
providing peace of mind to both the patients and the management.
According to Project Leader Virach
Sornlertlamvanich of SIIT, this research project aims to support the elderly in
their daily life activities. The system’s capabilities are catered for an
elderly total caring system.
Some of which are the bed-fallout
preventive alarm and sleep-hygiene monitoring system, the vital signal-analysis
tools, the health-monitoring system, the dementia and Alzheimer's
patient-tracking system, drug-use assistance, the elderly ecological model and
ageing society design, and the health-information platform for health-data
collection and analytics.
Moreover, the system is also capable of
sending an alert when detects high levels of humidity and room temperature,
which may cause heat stroke.
Mr Virach explained that the sensors
located beneath the mattress are wireless and are equipped with solar panels to
recharge the batteries.
The research team also developed an
application with additional functions such as searching for hospitals and
doctors; making appointments and viewing them; saving the contacts of favourite
doctors; viewing online medical results; family member information management;
and purchasing of medical packages online.