SENSORS COULD IMPROVE AT-HOME HEALTH CARE.

• Position: MEDICINE & HEALTH

Picture a future where health sensors strategically would be placed throughout a person's house to check his or her vital signs each day and to alert that individual about potential dangers, like a sudden step down to the living room. Outside of the home, sensors could measure local pollen or pollution levels in the air. For elderly residents, applications streamed through devices like their phone or a smart speaker could remind them to take medications on time.

These conveniences may allow the aging to stay in their own homes longer, and it also could reduce some of the costs associated with health care today, indicate University of Miami computer science specialists at the Institute for Data Science and Computing (IDSC). However, understanding how to connect this data from people's home to their physician's records, all while safeguarding privacy, is a challenge.

"We are trying to foster concepts for healthy aging and smart homes that will improve people's quality of life, while also looking at economics and public safety," says Yelena Yesha, chief innovation officer at IDSC and a visiting professor of computer science. "The need for these things was obviously accelerated by the pandemic, but it was also driven by the desire of many aging individuals to not move to assisted living facilities or nursing homes, but instead to age gracefully in the comfort of their own homes."

Nick Tsinoremas, director of IDSC and vice provost of Research, Computing and Data, says allowing doctors to access a patient's smart home data will help provide a more-accurate portrait of an individual's health. For example, if a person has allergies and a sensor picks up high levels of pollen or...