Radar sensing and AI to cut healthcare costs by monitoring vulnerable people

As well as the strain on accident and emergency departments and hospital wards however, such falls also lead to anxiety and loss of independence in the elderly.

Now a team of UK researchers, funded by EPSRC, is investigating the use of radar sensing and artificial intelligence to monitor vulnerable people, including the elderly and those with cognitive or physical impairments.

The system will be designed to monitor activity levels over long periods of time, to pick up on early signs of cognitive or functional decline, and to detect falls or strokes.

In this way it will provide family members or carers with information on the person’s health and wellbeing, and allow people to remain in their own homes for longer, preserving their quality of life, said Dr Francesco Fioranelli, the project leader at Glasgow University.

The radar system – a small box like that of a Wi-Fi router - will transmit and receive radio waves across rooms within the home, and then use machine learning to analyse the received echoes to understand how and where the person moves.