Automatic Monitoring of Sleep Behaviour in Nursing Home Residents

In this paper, we propose a completely unconstrained method for automatic monitoring of sleep behaviour and health status in nursing home residents using an Internetbased automatic sleep monitoring system mainly composed of a pressure sensor and a data server. When a nursing home resident lies in bed, his/her pressure variations due to heart pulsation, respiration, and body movement are sensed by a pressure sensor under a pillow or mattress. Then the corresponding digital signal is sent to a data server via Internet and processed by a background program to obtain heart rate, respiration rhythm, and body movement information in bed. 231 whole days’ data from 5 subjects in a nursing home were obtained by this system for evaluation. Through comparing with records provided by nursing home staff, we found our system can accurately and reliably estimate heart rate, respiration rhythm, and body movement during sleep for the analysis of circadian rhythm and sleep quality. It is concluded that our method may serve as an effective and convenient tool for automatic monitoring nursing home residents’s casual lifestyle, circadian rhythm, and health status. The introduction of this system may also lessen the burden of nursing home staff and help to realize personal specific healthcare service.