Grant: Operating Grant: Active and Assisted Living Program

The Geriatric Giants are the major categories of impairment that appear in elderly people. These include immobility, instability, incontinence and intellectual impairment. What they have in common is multiple causation, chronic course, deprivation of independence and no simple cure. Common symptoms are stroke, falls, immobility, incontinence, mental abnormality and frailty. Frailty can be defined as a physiologic syndrome characterized by decreased reserve and resistance to stressors, resulting from cumulative decline across multiple physiologic systems, and causing vulnerability to adverse outcomes. The main goal of this project is to integrate technology and results from previous projects and research activities that target the Geriatric Giants categories of impairments and which provide prevention and delay of common symptoms. Namely, the system will provide physical activity interventions targetting urinary incontinence, by training the pelvic floor muscle in a functional standing position and achieving better bladder control. Also, specific physical activity interventions will be provided for fall prevention, by focusing on strength and balance training. Mild cognitive impairment causes cognitive changes that are serious enough to be noticed by the individuals experiencing them or to other people, but the changes are not severe enough to interfere with daily life or independent function. Those with MCI have an increased risk of developing Alzheimer's. This new system will provide interventions in the form of cognitive-motor games that will reduce the incidence of mental disorders. The final system will act as an umbrella for these major categories of impairments associated with age and should feature a "basket" of interventions that should be tailored to each users' needs. The system will provide multi-modal interfaces and a sensorization layer based on inertial sensors to monitor the interventions.