University researchers test house monitoring for elderly

Researchers at the University of Virginia are working on a home monitoring system that could one day allow people to live in their homes longer.

The system, created as part of a collaboration between UVa’s architecture and engineering schools to design and build eco-friendly modular homes, is gathering data in the first ecoMOD home in Charlottesville that was finished two years ago.

The prototype system reports data to researchers once a day, but Paxton Marshall, a professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering, said the aim is to design a marketable system, and software, that reports information in real time.

Marshall, who has an 87-year-old mother living several hours away, said that children of elderly parents could use the as-it’s-happening system to monitor their parents remotely from a computer or cell phone.

“Fortunately, she’s in good health, but with a system like this in there I could monitor, basically, her every activity. ... I could tell when she turned the stove on and when she turned the stove off,” he said.

The new system also allows for breaking down, second-by-second, when utilities are being expended and in what amounts, if needed. For instance: Marshall said they’re trying to refine the system so that it can detect which appliances are being used by the energy they’re drawing. It can also detect where energy is being wasted.

“We’re wasting huge amounts of energy in the houses of people who don’t have the means to even do simple upgrades that could save energy, and some of these people are paying ridiculous energy bills,” Marshall said.

Chris Murray, business development director for the Jefferson Area Board for Aging, said technological advances in recent years have allowed more people to “age in place.”

“The best [monitoring systems] are the ones controlled by the [elderly] themselves,” Murray said of balancing safety and privacy. “When they become used to [the monitors] and accept it, it becomes a real sense of security for them.”

Marshall agrees. “This is not the kind of information that you want to have broadly available because there’s really some privacy issues,” he said. “We would have to be very careful with the security of the system and only make it available to whoever the occupant of the house authorized it be available to.”

Murray added that, in some cases, remaining in a home longer does not necessarily equal better quality of life, as a house with one person in it, especially in a rural area, can be isolating.

A second-generation monitoring system being developed will add motion sensors to detect when people come and go from a residence. It will also include emergency alerts.

Regina Carlson, director of development for UVa’s Institute on Aging, said research shows people “thrive best when they can stay within their home and within their communities.”

“Nobody relishes the idea of going into a nursing home,” Marshall said, “and the longer we can enable people to [avoid] that is a benefit for everyone.”