mHealth Sensors, Techniques, and Applications for Managing Wandering Behavior of People with Dementia: A Review

Managing wandering behavior of people with dementia (PWD) has become increasingly imperative for these reasons: its high prevalence (60%) among PWD, its negative outcomes such as falls or elopement, and its burden on caregivers. In this chapter, we discuss the emergence of sensors, techniques, and applications for managing wandering behavior of PWD. First, we briefly present the 5Ws1H (WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, WHY, HOW) conceptual map of wandering science including stakeholders (WHO), measurements of wandering (WHAT), environments in which wandering takes place (WHERE), detection of wandering (WHEN), causes of wandering (WHY), interventions of wandering (HOW). Second, we introduce a framework that identifies specific groups of mHealth and eHealth assistive technologies for managing dementia-related wandering. Third, we review existing technological works that address these 4 domains in the 5Ws1H conceptual map: WHAT-WHERE-WHY-HOW. In particular, we explore mHealth sensors to geo-fence and prevent elopement, mHealth devices to track and locate PWD who wander, information services to assist caregivers, eHealth tools to measure dimensions of dementia-related wandering, and mHealth tools that analyze proximal factors as well as study background factors. Based on this review, we further discuss research and design issues, human factors, ethics, security and privacy that need to be considered when implementing mHealth applications for wandering management. We conclude the chapter by highlighting the future research work in this area.