Modeling and forecasting of at home activity in older adults using passive sensor technology

Gillam, Jess and Killick, Rebecca and Heal, Jack and Norwood, Ben (2022) Modeling and forecasting of at home activity in older adults using passive sensor technology. Statistics in Medicine, 41 (23). pp. 4629-4646. ISSN 0277-6715

Abstract

Life expectancy in the UK has increased since the 19th century. As of 2019, there are just under 12 million people in the UK aged 65 or over, with close to a quarter living by themselves. Thus, many families and carers are looking for new ways to improve the health and care of older people. Passive sensors such as infra‐red motion and plug sensors have had success as a noninvasive way to help the older people. These provide a series of categorical sensor events throughout the day. Modeling this categorical dataset can help to understand and predict behavior. This article proposes a method to model the probability a sensor will trigger throughout the day for a household whilst accounting for the prior data and other sensors within the home. We present our results on a dataset from Howz, a company helping people to passively identify changes in their behavior over time.