KeepingTrack: Helping dementia autonomy

• Autor(a) principal: Sousa, Maria
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Outros Autores: Bastos, António, Rocha, Pedro, Bártolo, João, Peixoto, Sónia, Guimarães, Pedro, Marques, Arcelina
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.22/25352
• topic: Dementia; Biomedical Devices; Distance monitoring; Face recognition; GPS tracking

Currently, the most developed countries are facing an increase in average life expectancy. This increase is mainly due to high technological advances in terms of techniques for preventing, diagnosing and treating diseases. In this way, more and more degenerative diseases will appear, including dementia. This disease affects memory, reasoning, judgment and learning capacity. Its carriers may, among other things, try to run away from home, lose their sense of direction and present changes in their personality leading to a state of mental confusion. In this way appears KeepingTrack, which, with a GPS pulse tracker and a camera capable of identifying when a patient leaves home, will allow the monitoring of patients diagnosed with this disease, ensuring their safety and assistance, without constant personal supervision by the caregiver, thus preserving the patient's daily autonomy. There are already several devices that serve this same purpose, but they present difficulties in terms of device portability, battery life and in maintaining an online history that is available for consultation.