Intelligent System for the Prevention of Pressure Ulcers by Monitoring Postural Changes with Wearable Inertial Sensors

Abstract

Pressure ulcers affect the quality of life and health level of patients while causing a cost increase for the health system. Despite all of this, there is no monitoring system for this disease, even though it is very common in hospitalized patients. To resolve this issue, in this work, we present a prototype for monitoring and caring of pressure ulcers, through an intelligent system based on wearable inertial devices. The system detects the position of patients with reduced mobility while in bed, walking, or standing; providing, to medical staff and caregivers, useful information by means of mobile devices, in particular: (i) A historical record of body activity and (ii) notifications when a single position persists for a prolonged period of time. The following contributions are presented in this paper. Firstly, a technological survey of healthcare systems applied to pressure ulcers is presented. Secondly, an architecture and a methodology for modelling wearable inertial sensors for classifying body position are proposed. Finally, experimental tests with real cases were conducted to evaluate machine learning approaches and to validate the position estimation of the case study developed with four participants.

Keywords

• body monitoring
• elder care
• wearables
• sensor
• pressure ulcers