mHealth and Aging

With aging comes increased burden of chronic disease. A successful transition to a sustainable health care system would require older adults and their caregivers to carry out routine care at home or in the community (i.e., aging-in-place). This much needed patient and caregiver empowerment, as well as seamless integration with health care providers when needed, can be facilitated by digital health technologies. Mobile health, or more commonly known as mHealth, leverages mobile devices and sensors to collect health data from everyday lives outside of hospitals and clinics. When integrated with machine learning and artificial intelligence, mHealth can be an ideal solution for continuous health monitoring in older adults as well as supporting aging-in-place. Toward these goals, we have investigated the feasibility of using mHealth solutions in older adult populations, with a focus on application of machine learning to wearable device data.