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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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The use of tracking technologies for the analysis of outdoor mobility in the face of dementia
— first steps into a project and some illustrative findings from Germany | | Author(s) | Frank Oswald, Hans-Werner Wahl, Elke Voss |
| Journal title | Journal of Housing for the Elderly, vol 24, no 1, 2010 |
| Publisher | Routledge, 2010 |
| Pages | pp 55-73 |
| Source | http://www.tandfonline.com |
| Keywords | Cognitive impairment ; Dementia ; Assistive technology ; Electronic alarm systems ; Usage [services] ; Independence ; Pilot ; Projects ; Germany. |
| Annotation | As people age in place, cognitive impairment is a major threat to maintaining out-of-home mobility. The Senior Tracking (SenTra) project measures outdoor mobility by taking advantage of tracking technology in an interdisciplinary project involving researchers from geography, social work, gerontology, psychology, and medicine disciplines. The project assesses mobility patterns of urban-dwelling demented and mildly cognitively impaired elders and cognitively intact persons over a period of 3 years in Israel and Germany. The main objectives are to learn more about out-of-home mobility by means of global positioning system/geographical information system technology; to analyse the relationships between cognitive functioning, mobility behaviour, and well-being; to examine the ethical implications of the use of advanced tracking technologies in this population; and to assess the potential of tracking technologies in the diagnosis of various types of cognitive impairment. The article presents preliminary findings to illustrate the potential of interdisciplinary data analyses to be performed later in the project. Pilot data were drawn from a combined psychiatric, psycho-social, and tracking data assessment of a group of 19 men and women aged 63 to 80 (7 who were healthy, 6 who were mildly cognitive impaired, and 6 who were demented) living in Germany. The findings revealed that healthy participants have better health and higher levels of well-being and smaller networks compared to those who are cognitively impaired. Examples of daily outdoor trips indicate meaningful mobility patterns and the need to combine psycho-social and geographical data to understand the relationships between outdoor mobility, socio-structural dimensions, behaviour patterns, and well-being. By achieving its aims, the project will be able to make a substantial contribution to basic, applied, and clinical knowledge gaps in the area of mobility and cognitive impairment research. (KJ/RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-100512205 A |
| Classmark | E4: EA: M: OV:YA6: QLD: C3: 4UC: 3E: 767 |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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