Abstract

Recently the problems connected with the ageing population all over the world have become more and more severe. Many projects have been developed to enable the people to live longer in home environment, thus keeping their independence together with reducing the expenses of the public health care. The results in this area have a quick public impact. Different sensor systems have been proposed for monitoring the functional abilities in elderly and for detecting their functional decline. The sensors are located in the bathroom, bedroom, closet, front door, kitchen, living room and shower. The statistic shows that 30% of the old people fall at least once a year and 75% of these events are responsible for accidental death. The feeling of fall increases the anxiety and the depression in the elderly. Therefore, the monitoring system must enable the caregiver to track remotely the user#x2019;s walk around the rooms and to perceive immediately the falls without the need of confirmation request. We started to develop and implement a low-cost system directed to monitor the user walk, to detect the falls and to check the cardiac activity by analysing the photo-pletismographic signals. An interface for communication between the patient and health care expert is also provided. This paper is aimed to report the results obtained in reliable fall detection of solitary living elderly.