Wandering analysis with mobile phones: On the relation between randomness and wandering

Population pyramids have rapidly changed their shape worldwide. Specially in industrialised countries, where a steady ageing process is taking place. Due to the ageing of the population, age-related illnesses such as mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia are becoming commonplace and healthcare systems struggle to improve the quality of life of patients and carers. Wandering and disorientation are common symptoms amongst patients with MCI, and they could lead to fatal outcomes. In this article we propose a wandering detection technique based on the analysis of randomness in patients' trajectories, which are gathered by means of standard low-cost mobile phones with GPS.