A location-based mobile health care facility search system for senior citizens

Recently, an elderly population who needs health care or nursing service has been growing rapidly in the Republic of Korea due to a sharp increase in the number of senior citizens. But it is not easy for them to find an accessible and adequate proper health care center that can attend to their needs. For instance, an elder with a cardiovascular disorder should be close to a medical clinic that can attend to his/her illness. This also applies to other diseases as the mobility of seniors is limited. Thus, the program proposed facility in this study allows senior citizens to locate an appropriate medical facility by using smartphone’s GPS-based location information together with a mobile push system. Also, this O2O program monitors the user with the Bluetooth beacons. The development program autonomously estimates the current coordinates of user with a GPS function or a network information system to locate the nearest medical centers or clinics from the database where the information regarding the location of medical facilities and user, along with their specialties, has been stored in advance. The equation of straight line and the user coordinates are used to find suitable prospect medical facilities. The program also offers a user monitoring service (senior citizen) so that it will be able to provide a variety of high-quality services by establishing a technical alliance with medical centers.