Monitoring children’s emotional and behavioural patterns via the use of wearable and external sensors tracking physiological and other forms of data.
This project was in partnership with Sherlock Healthcare Services (SHS) who specialise in providing residential care and support to young people with emotional behavioural disorders, mild difficulties, and challenging/complex needs (e.g., in relation to autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder).
Monitoring of activities and behaviour within a home is typically undertaken manually by SHS staff which has significant resource implications. Systems utilising a range of sensors to autonomously collect data can present opportunities for streamlining much of this process to further support the care of young people in residential homes. However, there has been a lack of work to date investigating the potential of this approach in real-world environments.
The project involved leading the design, development, and evaluation of a novel decision/behaviour support platform capable of collecting and visualising data from young people (based at SHS’ residential care homes) to facilitate the management of emotional behavioural disorders.
In particular, the project focused on monitoring children’s behavioural patterns via the use of wearable and external sensors tracking physiological and other forms of data (e.g. sleep, movement, heart rate, temperature, etc.). A key research focus was also around exploring how service users and other stakeholders perceive the usability and efficacy of the new system being developed as part of the project.
Details around the technical implementation of the platform are available in the following paper: An IoT-based Solution for Monitoring Young People with Emotional Behavioral Disorders in a Residential Childcare Setting.
Project Team
- Bharat Paudyal (KTP Associate)
- Professor Ian Williams
- Professor Chris Creed
Funder
This project was funded by Innovate UK through a Knowledge Transfer Partnership grant.