REMOTE WELLNESS MONITORING SYSTEM WITH UNVERSALLY ACCESSIBLE INTERFACE

• US 20080033256A1
• Filed: 08/07/2007
• Published: 02/07/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 08/07/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Fariborz M. Farhan, John W. Peifer
• Original Assignee: Fariborz M. Farhan, John W. Peifer
• Inventors: Farhan, Fariborz M., Peifer, John W.
• Granted Patent: US 7,772,965 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 600/300
• CPC Class Codes: G08B 21/04 responsive to non-activity, e.g. of elderly persons G08B21/06 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 20/10 relating to drugs or medications, e.g. for ensuring correct administration to patients
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/63 for local operation
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/67 for remote operation
• CPC Class Codes: G16Z 99/00 Subject matter not provided for in other main groups of this subclass
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 128/903 Radio telemetry

Abstract

This embodiment of the invention consists of an apparatus or home appliance unit embodied in a hardware entity running an embedded software program connected to a server computer via a phone line or high-speed internet. At home, the apparatus communicates with an optional set of medical health monitoring devices such as but not limited to, blood pressure monitors, blood glucose meters, and pulse oximeters using wired or wireless communications methods in order to perform wellness measurement. The illustrated embodiments of the invention provide a novel user interface on the home appliance to make the system accessible to people with disabilities. The simple user interface is designed to be accessible to people who are blind or deaf or people who cannot use their hands and require an alternative interface device such as a sip & puff controller. For the hearing impaired, the interface duplicates all speech and informational sounds with text or graphic cues. For the Blind, a Rotary knob provides tactile and audio feedback as the user navigates the system options. As every clockwise or counter-clockwise rotation of the knob brings a new option into focus, the user feels the click of the knob, and hears several audio cues including an audible click, a unique musical chime and a spoken description of the selectable option. For people who cannot use their hands to rotate the knob, alternative input controller devices, (such as a sip & puff controller) are supported through wired (such as but not limited to USB) or wireless (such as but not limited to Bluetooth, Zigbee IEEE 802.15.4, Z-Wave, Wi-Fi) connections. The home unit can further monitor wellness activity of the care recipient by pegging the number of times the care recipient passes by a infra-red motion sensor. The filtering of the latter information and subsequent integration over time and comparison with historical counts per unit of time within a 24 hour period can determine the normal activity pattern for the care recipient over the previous 24 hours.

Claims

1. A remote health and wellness monitoring and communication system enabling two way communication between a subject and a caregiver, the system comprising:

a remote apparatus including;

a human interface, the human interface comprising;

a rotary dial input knob,

a display monitor,

a speaker,

a microphone,

an RF transmitter/receiver, and

a Passive Infra-Red (PIR) motion sensor,

an internet connection operable for;

receiving incoming messages from a server and presenting such messages in a particular format,

transmitting motion activity and replies from the subject back to server, and

communicating with a wireless and/or wired health measurement or control device; and

a server operable to;

communicate with the remote apparatus to receive replies from the subject and to communicate with the health measurement device to receive measured health and wellness data, and

store such data for presentment to authorized entities through the internet.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the rotary dial input knob further comprises:

a rotary knob that is fixed at a singular and stationary position, thereby being easy to locate by the subject, even if the subject is visually impaired;

an indented shape and a non-slip material thereby being easy to use by the subject, even if the subject has limited manual dexterity;

a tactile and audible feedback mechanism for every movement of the rotary knob.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the rotary knob can be rotated either clockwise or counterclockwise and, each clockwise or counterclockwise movement of the knob will:

invoke an audible “

click” and

select a next icon by highlighting the icon and making an audible sound calling out the icon and

wherein the rotary knob can be depressed and each depression of the knob will execute the icon or take the user to the next level of nested screen.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein said rotary knob is used to navigate through a graphical and audible human interface, wherein said human interface consists of a set of nested screens with each screen having a fixed number of audible icons arranged in a circular fashion and including a home and a help audible icon.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the audible icons include icons for messaging, wellness monitoring and calendar management, and wherein the depression of the rotary knob while:

the messaging icon is highlighted will result in the subject navigating to a circular message list

the wellness monitoring icon is highlighted will result in the subject navigating to a new circular list screen that includes, home, help, medication management, health measurement and activity icons; and

the Calendar icon is highlighted will result in the subject navigating to a calendar events circular list screen.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein the circular message list screen includes an exit list audible icon, and upon each clockwise turn of the rotary knob the item below will be selected and upon each counterclockwise turn of the rotary knob the item above is selected and upon selection of a message, the originator, title and the date of each selected message is synthesized and audibly played back.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein the depression of the rotary knob while a particular message is selected will open the message and navigate to a message content screen that begins with an exit message icon.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein a clockwise turn of the rotary knob will move from one word to the next and speech synthesize each word and wherein a counterclockwise turn of the rotary knob will move from one word to the previous and speech synthesize each word.

9. The system of claim 7, wherein while the message content screen is active, a clockwise turn of the rotary knob will scroll down the message, eventually returning to the exit message icon and wherein a counterclockwise turn of the rotary knob will scroll up the message, eventually returning to the exit message icon.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein after the subject navigates to the end of a message, a clockwise turn of the rotary knob will navigate to a reply icon prior to navigating to the exit message icon.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein depressing the rotary knob while the reply icon is highlighted will navigate to a reply screen which includes a record, a return to list, a home and a help audible icon.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein depressing the rotary knob while the record icon is highlighted will navigate to a message recording screen.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein upon entering the message recording screen, the device is operable to display and audibly announce instructions to the subject to begin recording a voice reply.

14. The system of claim 4, wherein the audible icons further comprise icons related to wellness monitoring and wherein depressing the rotary knob while the wellness icon is highlighted will navigate to a circular list screen with icons for requesting assistance with medications, measurements, and activity monitoring.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein depressing the rotary knob will navigate to a medication list screen containing a summary of the subject'"'"'s current medications describing the name, dosage, schedule, and condition it is treating.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein when the rotary knob is depressed while a particular medication is selected in the medication list screen, the device navigates to a medication detail screen containing more detailed information regarding that particular medication.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein when the rotary knob is depressed while a return icon is selected in the medication detail screen, the device will navigate back to the main medication list.

18. The system of claim 4, wherein the audible icons further comprise icons related to wellness monitoring and wherein depressing the rotary knob while a measurements icon is highlighted will result in navigating to a circular list screen with icons for obtaining medical measurements from measurement devices operable to make measurements comprising, but not limited to, blood pressure, glucose, weight, and SpO2.

19. The system of claim 1 wherein the remote apparatus is operable to communicate wirelessly with a wireless home appliance comprising, but not limited to, a motion sensor, a door switch, a light switch, a sip and puff controller and a fall detector.

20. The system of claim 19, wherein the sip and puff controller acts as input device to the remote apparatus and wherein a puff is equivalent to a clockwise turn of the rotary knob a sip is equivalent to counterclockwise turn of the rotary knob and a mouth squeeze is equivalent to a depression of the rotary knob.

21. The system of claim 1 wherein the Passive Infra-Red (PIR) motion sensor uses a commercially available technology to prevent false detection of pet movement.

22. The system of claim 21, wherein the PIR detector is operable to measure velocity of a human motion by using conventionally available means.

23. The system of claim 22, wherein the PIR detector can store motion velocity of an PWAID person by averaging motion speed over the first few trials.

24. A method for detecting activity using a PIR detector to detect motion, measure motion velocity and provide time-stamp measurements but to prevent false detections of pets, the method comprising the steps of:

learning the motion speed of a human object by averaging the speed of a minimum of first P (P>

1) human-only detected and measured motion speeds at the beginning of the operation and calculating a set of object detection thresholds based on this average and storing these object detection thresholds;

detecting subsequent human-only motion occurrences that fall within the above object detection thresholds and capturing the time of day of such occurrence;

performing statistical processing of these occurrences over an initial statistical observation period to determine counts of motion activity of the human-only object over a unit interval of time, less than or equal to an hour, and for every such interval within a twenty-four day and statistically computing thresholds of normal activity for each of these unit intervals;

detecting subsequent human-only motion occurrences after the initial statistical processing phase, that fall within the object detection thresholds above and counting these occurrences for every unit interval;

decision making of normalcy by comparing the counts for each unit interval and comparing those to the levels computed during the statistical observation phase above for each unit interval to determine normal, subnormal or no-activity for the given interval for the current day; and

updating statistics by continuing to perform statistical processing of these motion counts for each unit interval to ensure that over time, the normal activity thresholds are statistically appropriate and if necessary updating the normal activity thresholds.

25. The method of claim 24, wherein during the statistical observation phase, further comprising the step of computing a mean and standard deviation for the observed counts for the given interval and setting an arbitrary threshold count for the given interval as a mathematical function of the mean and the standard deviation.

26. The method of claim 24, wherein the step of decision making of normalcy further comprise the step of deriving an output selected from the group of outputs including:

above-normal, normal, below-normal or zero-activity, based on the inputs received for every interval within the twenty-four hour period, the inputs comprising a motion count for every occurrence of motion speed within the range learned during the learning step, a motion count of any motion event regardless of its speed, statistical mean computed for the interval and during the statistical processing phase, and standard deviation for the distribution for the said interval computed during the statistical processing phase.

27. The method of claim 24, wherein the step of updating statistics further comprising of the step, computing the mean and standard deviation of each interval count over a minimum of a thirty period and updating the mean and standard deviation upon confirmation of a remote caregiver and hence computing and updating new thresholds for each interval.