2009 Faculty Researchers

Yang Gong, MD, PhD

Exploring Effective Data Displays for TigerPlace

---

Department

Health Management and Informatics

Office Location

CS&E 717

Phone #:

Office: (573) 882-5772
Fax: (573) 882-6158

Summary

Aging in place is the concept that allows seniors to remain in the environment of their choice with supportive services as needed[1]. Information technology can become a useful tool for early identification of changing conditions and early intervention, as well as for ongoing customized monitoring[2]. Tigerplace, a retirement community helping residents age in place, is equipped with sensors and other devices to monitor residents’ health, mobility, and to ultimately enhance aging in place.

The sensor data of senior residents has been collected over two years. They are useful in identifying potential health risk based on motion, pulse, breathing, and restlessness sensor data. The vast amount of sensor data, plus the EMR data, can easily overwhelm healthcare professionals’ ability to understand the data, reduce their ability to detect trends, and therefore, prolong the decision-making process. In order to allow health professionals to inspect a specific participant and a date range, an effort has been made in designing a secure web-based interface for the representation of different types of sensor data. A multidisciplinary team (including the PI and Co-I) has been refining the interface, to ensure it is easy-to-use, easy-to-understand. All sensor data, compliant with HIPAA, is stored in a MySQL database. In this case, Relational data plays an important role in senior resident records and its effective representation should be taken into account in designing an effective decision support system for healthcare professionals[3].

References:

1. Marek KD, Rantz MJ. Aging in place: a new model for long-term care. Nurs Adm Q2000;24(3):1-11.
2. Demiris G, Oliver DP, Dickey G, Skubic M, Rantz M. Findings from a participatory evaluation of a smart home application for older adults. Technol Health Care2008;16(2):111-8.
3. Denekamp Y, Lutski R, Ronen M, Bitterman N. Exploring methods of visualizing laboratorial data in electronic medical record systems. AMIA proceding 2005.