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The Tampa, Fla., Veterans Affairs hospital has kicked off a $3 million project that uses advanced technology to help patients with traumatic brain injury independently plan, organize and complete everyday activities such as doing laundry or emptying the trash.
Jan Jasiewicz, the researcher at the hospital's Health Services Research and Development Service who manages the Smart Home project, said veterans with TBI have lost the ability to manage these basic, but important, tasks. Smart Home helps them relearn the skills by following their movements around the house and sending them text or video prompts when they get off track.
The Tampa hospital has equipped five apartments housing 10 veterans with a suite of high tech equipment, including a system that can track patients' location, sensors to monitor use of appliances and screens to relay video prompts, according to Jasiewicz.
Patients and VA staff wear wrist tags linked to a real-time location system that Ubisense of Cambridge, England, developed. The system tracks the tag using wall sensors. Because it is based on ultra-wideband technology that transmits signals across a broad swath of the radio frequency spectrum, it can pinpoint patients' locations with far greater accuracy than other approaches such as radio frequency identification, which only could determine which room a patient is in, Jasiewicz said.
In fact, the Ubisense wrist tags broadcast their ID on a 6 to 8 gigahertz channel and the location system uses time-delay-of-arrival and angle-of-arrival methods to determine position in three dimensions to within six inches.
Each master sensor relays the tag's position to a server, which aggregates the position of all tags within the apartments, Jasiewicz said. This information feeds into a mapping application that allows any hospital staff member using an iPad, smart phone or a touch-screen to quickly find veterans as they go about their daily routines.
Clinicians can then use 65 monitors -- about the size of the screen of an Apple iPad -- to provide text or video messages to help the patients relearn the art of daily living. For example, if a patient randomly wanders the apartment, a clinician could send a prompt to one or more screens suggesting he or she engage in a more constructive activity, Jasiewicz said.
Appliances in the apartment, such as the washing machines, are equipped with sensors that can determine whether the patient, for instance, put soap into the machine or emptied it when the load was done. If not, a nearby screen prompts the patient to complete these steps, Jasiewicz said. Sensors located in the bathroom can help determine how long patients spend shaving and prompt them to finish and move on if they're taking too long.
Russ Chandler, chief executive officer of Denver-based Ubisense Americas and chief executive officer of the company's real-time location division, said VA has adapted technology primarily used in industrial applications: BMW and Airbus both use Ubisense technology to track parts on assembly lines.
The VA project piggybacks on work the company did at the University of South Florida in 2009 to track Alzheimer's patients, Chandler added. Ubisense acts as the integrator for the Tampa VA on its Smart Home project, and has developed the entire system, including the screens and sensors in addition to the tracking devices.
Jasiewicz described Smart Home as a "cognitive prosthetic" whose ultimate goal is to rehabilitate veterans with TBI so they can function normally outside the hospital.
Jan Jasiewicz, the researcher at the hospital's Health Services Research and Development Service who manages the Smart Home project, said veterans with TBI have lost the ability to manage these basic, but important, tasks. Smart Home helps them relearn the skills by following their movements around the house and sending them text or video prompts when they get off track.
The Tampa hospital has equipped five apartments housing 10 veterans with a suite of high tech equipment, including a system that can track patients' location, sensors to monitor use of appliances and screens to relay video prompts, according to Jasiewicz.
Patients and VA staff wear wrist tags linked to a real-time location system that Ubisense of Cambridge, England, developed. The system tracks the tag using wall sensors. Because it is based on ultra-wideband technology that transmits signals across a broad swath of the radio frequency spectrum, it can pinpoint patients' locations with far greater accuracy than other approaches such as radio frequency identification, which only could determine which room a patient is in, Jasiewicz said.
In fact, the Ubisense wrist tags broadcast their ID on a 6 to 8 gigahertz channel and the location system uses time-delay-of-arrival and angle-of-arrival methods to determine position in three dimensions to within six inches.
Each master sensor relays the tag's position to a server, which aggregates the position of all tags within the apartments, Jasiewicz said. This information feeds into a mapping application that allows any hospital staff member using an iPad, smart phone or a touch-screen to quickly find veterans as they go about their daily routines.
Clinicians can then use 65 monitors -- about the size of the screen of an Apple iPad -- to provide text or video messages to help the patients relearn the art of daily living. For example, if a patient randomly wanders the apartment, a clinician could send a prompt to one or more screens suggesting he or she engage in a more constructive activity, Jasiewicz said.
Appliances in the apartment, such as the washing machines, are equipped with sensors that can determine whether the patient, for instance, put soap into the machine or emptied it when the load was done. If not, a nearby screen prompts the patient to complete these steps, Jasiewicz said. Sensors located in the bathroom can help determine how long patients spend shaving and prompt them to finish and move on if they're taking too long.
Russ Chandler, chief executive officer of Denver-based Ubisense Americas and chief executive officer of the company's real-time location division, said VA has adapted technology primarily used in industrial applications: BMW and Airbus both use Ubisense technology to track parts on assembly lines.
The VA project piggybacks on work the company did at the University of South Florida in 2009 to track Alzheimer's patients, Chandler added. Ubisense acts as the integrator for the Tampa VA on its Smart Home project, and has developed the entire system, including the screens and sensors in addition to the tracking devices.
Jasiewicz described Smart Home as a "cognitive prosthetic" whose ultimate goal is to rehabilitate veterans with TBI so they can function normally outside the hospital.
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