ELF@Home: Self-care for older adults through home-based self-assessment of physical and health condition

Frailty syndrome leads to disability in activities of daily living and is a major cause of loss of independence among older adults. ELF@Home built on the proven benefits of physical exercise in old age to develop an autonomous self-care solution aimed at people over 65, without frailty or at risk of developing it, who live independently in their own homes.

The objectives of the project were:

• To automatically generate a personalized exercise program according to each user's health status and activity level.
• To monitor the correct performance of the exercises without direct human supervision, using computer vision.
• To assess health status by means of biomedical sensors in order to adjust the exercise program.

ELF@Home was built around the following pillars:

• Wearable activity sensor: a device specifically designed for the needs of older adults, oriented toward continuous monitoring of activity level.
• Biomedical sensing: tracking of health status by means of medical sensors.
• Television interface and computer vision: guidance of exercise sessions through the television, with computer vision analysis of the correct execution of movements.

CTIC coordinated the project, with the collaboration of Izertis and the Sociedad Gerontológica y Geriátrica del Principado de Asturias (Spain), Umeå University, Explizit, and the Municipality of Skellefteå (Sweden), and the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits, Innovationsmanufaktur, and 2D Debus & Diebold Meßsysteme (Germany).