A Home-Based Frailty Detection System Using Wireless Sensor Technology with Multimedia Interactive Games

The purpose of this study is to use wireless sensor technologies to develop a system for frailty measurement and detection with multimedia interactive games that allows users to collect and manage their personal frailty information automatically at home. The assessment software we designed is a game-like system, which increases the motivation for participation among the elderly. The system has five components: (1) a series of frailty measurement and detection games, (2) an electronic grip strength meter to measure the subject´s grip strength and reaction time, (3) an electronic pressure pad (with a pressure sensor) to detect slowness in movement, weakness, weight loss and balance impairment, (4) a functional reach measuring instrument to measure body extension, and (5) a Home-based Information Gateway, which collects all of this data and predicts frailty trends. We designed an experiment to test the overall system performance, and, to test the validity and reliability, we compared these tools with traditional frailty measurement methods. The results show that there is a correlation between frailty results from our test and results from the traditional measurement methods. They also show that our system is a high specificity prediction tool that can be used to assess frailty.