Vital fitness and health telemonitoring of elderly people

Modern advances in technology allow new telemonitoring systems for prevention, early diagnosis and management of chronic and degenerative conditions. These remote monitoring systems reduce the need for recurring visits to the hospital, allow physicians better insight into the patient's state and help determine the necessary level of care for each individual patient. Telemonitoring can also be applied on a long-term basis to elderly persons to detect gradual deterioration in their health status, which may imply a reduction in their ability to live independently. The functional potential of the upper extremities is a good indicator of how well a person can live independently and can also help to determine their health status. This article presents an OSGi residential gateway based telemonitoring system and a case study of its application in health telemonitoring, especially considering locomotion status of the upper extremities. In this case study, two electronic devices, used for monitoring the functional degradation of upper extremities, are introduced into the presented system. One of those two devices records dynamic properties of the hand grip (e.g. grip speed, grip stability, grip endurance) and the other device records hand movement dynamic properties (e.g. speed of movement, spectral components).