General Education Center, National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Yunlin 640301, Taiwan.
Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Yunlin 640301, Taiwan.
Sensors (Basel). 2024 Sep 20;24(18):6099. doi: 10.3390/s24186099.
Providing a safe and secure living environment for residents that is supported by a dedicated healthcare team is one of the core values of nursing homes. Nursing homes must protect residents from the risk of going missing, track quarantined residents and visitors to control the spread of infection, and maintain proactive nursing rounds. However, recruiting and retaining qualified caregivers and medical staff has long been a challenge. Therefore, using advanced technology to ensure the safety and security of residents is highly desirable. In this work, we first demonstrate the applicability of indoor tracking applications in a nursing home, such as resident and asset tracking, nursing assistant management, visitor tracking, infection control, and vital-sign monitoring. To monitor the locations of residents and staff, Bluetooth tags were used, providing real-time data for location tracking. We then conduct a series of quantitative analyses to illustrate how indoor tracking data can support the management of nursing homes, including characterizing residents' activities in daily living and assessing the performance and workload of nursing assistants. Finally, we use qualitative research to evaluate the acceptability of an indoor positioning system in the nursing home. The results show that the implemented indoor positioning applications can improve the quality of healthcare and working efficiency, thereby providing a safer and more secure living environment for residents.
为居民提供安全有保障的居住环境，并得到专业医疗团队的支持，这是养老院的核心价值观之一。养老院必须保护居民免受走失的风险，追踪隔离的居民和访客，以控制感染的传播，并保持积极主动的护理查房。然而，长期以来，招聘和留住合格的护理人员和医务人员一直是一个挑战。因此，使用先进的技术来确保居民的安全和保障是非常可取的。在这项工作中，我们首先展示了室内跟踪应用在养老院中的适用性，例如居民和资产跟踪、护理助理管理、访客跟踪、感染控制和生命体征监测。为了监控居民和工作人员的位置，使用了蓝牙标签，提供实时位置跟踪数据。然后，我们进行了一系列定量分析，说明室内跟踪数据如何支持养老院的管理，包括描述居民日常生活中的活动以及评估护理助理的绩效和工作量。最后，我们使用定性研究来评估养老院室内定位系统的可接受性。结果表明，所实施的室内定位应用程序可以提高医疗保健质量和工作效率，从而为居民提供更安全、更有保障的生活环境。
