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["Gregg Vanderheiden" <gv@trace.wisc.edu>]

• "Wireless Care for Elderly and Disabled People"
  IST Results (09/15/04)

Giving elderly and disabled people the means to contact carers in case of emergency while allowing carers to constantly know where their patients are is the reason behind LOCOMOTION, an IST project that combines global positioning system (GPS) technology with standard mobile phones. The GPS provides accuracy to about 50 meters depending on where the user is, enabling carers to precisely pinpoint users' location if they get in trouble; project coordinator Antonio Linares Torres at Indra Sistemas in Spain notes that LOCOMOTION facilitates rapid user location and response to emergencies. "LOCOMOTION offers users greater independence and mobility by helping the elderly and people who suffer memory loss overcome their fear of leaving the house and becoming lost," he asserts. Carers can remotely monitor patients via a call center that manages interaction with users' handhelds through software that features automatic calling capabilities to periodically check up on users' status. The call center's infrastructure requirements are low because the application is Web-based, while the mobile devices themselves need little modification, which contributes to LOCOMOTION's cost-effectiveness. The system can also establish "safety zones" specific to individual users, and alert the call center when users go outside those areas. Perhaps the most critical detail of LOCOMOTION is its ease of use: The system is currently deployed in two prototypes, one of which is a standard phone equipped with location awareness, while the other is a mobile tracking device that puts users in touch with the call center.
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Gregg

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Gregg C Vanderheiden Ph.D.
Professor - Depts of Ind. Engr. & BioMed Engr.
Director - Trace R & D Center
University of Wisconsin-Madison
<http://trace.wisc.edu/> FAX 608/262-8848 
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