HomeLab
HomeLab enables researchers to study how to help older people and people with challenges live safely and as independently as possible at home.
HomeLab is a ‘home within a lab’ where researchers can invent and test new products to help older people and those with disabilities stay at home longer and more safely. The lab resembles a typical single-storey dwelling with functional plumbing and wiring. Study subjects can occupy the living space and test innovations in a real-life setting, while researchers can observe all studies from an overhead catwalk.
HomeLab provides a lab environment for early testing of prototypes and processes before they are deployed in trials in real homes. Researchers often use volunteers who are trained as actors to reproduce the abilities, behaviours and reactions of people with specific physical, sensory and cognitive impairments.
Our vision is to develop a platform where different technologies are seamlessly integrated to provide a safe and enabling environment that will allow more people to safely age in their own homes. The technologies will include sensors in the rooms, wearable sensors in clothing and domestic robots. These technologies will help with daily tasks, monitor health and safety, and supervise treatments including nutrition and exercise.
Researchers are developing intelligent home systems that can help older adults and people with disabilities stay safely in their homes and improve their independence and quality of life. These systems will provide automated reminders for daily tasks, respond to emergency situations and provide cognitive and social support. Future research will expand these systems to be able to detect changes in a person’s health and provide warnings before the person’s situation deteriorates.
Other researchers are developing advanced technologies to help caregivers manage common stressful, physically demanding tasks involved in caring for someone at home, such as lifting, bathing and toileting. These products will be affordable, practical and easy to install without requiring modification or renovation of the home.
Equipment Highlights
HomeLab is constructed using residential materials. It has a typical electrical panel and plumbing. There is no ceiling so that monitoring equipment can be suspended from above and researchers can watch from a gallery surrounding it on 3 sides. Electrically operated ceiling blinds can be deployed to protect privacy in the bathroom. HomeLab is designed to reproduce challenges to accessibility that are seen in typical residential environments, such as cramped bathrooms. There are stairs that lead to a small platform representing the potential for a second floor.
Quick Facts
- It has been estimated that 27% of families in Ontario have provided care continuously for the last 2 years.
- Almost half of family caregivers report a high level of physical and mental stress while 14 per cent experience physical pain.
Recent Publications
- Cohen R.; Fernie G. and Roshan Fekr A. Contactless Drink Intake Monitoring Using Depth Data. IEEE Access Journal, 2023 (accepted).
- Chan A, Cohen R, Robinson K, Bhardwaj D, Gregson G, Jutai JW, Millar J, Ríos Rincón A, Roshan Fekr A. Evidence and User Considerations of Home Health Monitoring for Older Adults: Scoping Review. JMIR Aging 2022; 5(4): e40079.
- Cohen R.; Fernie G. and Roshan Fekr A. Automated Fluid Intake Detection Using RGB Videos. Sensors 2022, 22, 6747.
- Owlia M, Kamachi M, Dutta T. Reducing lumbar spine flexion using real-time biofeedback during patient handling tasks. Work. 2020 May 12:1-1.
- Senarath S.; Fernie G.; Roshan Fekr A. Influential Factors in Remote Monitoring of Heart Failure Patients: A Review of the Literature and Direction for Future Research. Sensors 2021, 21, 3575.
- Jirapat Likitlersuang, Elizabeth R. Sumitro, Pirashanth Theventhiran, Sukhvinder Kalsi-Ryan & Jose´ Zariffa (2017) Views of individuals with spinal cord injury on the use of wearable cameras to monitor upper limb function in the home and community, The Journal of Spinal Cord Medicine, 40:6, 706-714
- J. Likitlersuang and J. Zariffa, "Interaction Detection in Egocentric Video: Toward a Novel Outcome Measure for Upper Extremity Function," in IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 561-569, March 2018.
- King EC, Boscart VM, Weiss BM, Dutta T, Callaghan JP, Fernie GR. Assisting frail seniors with toileting in a home bathroom: Approaches used by home care providers (2017). Journal of Applied Gerontology, 38 (5):1-34.
- Komisar V, King EC, Moore E, Hassan S, Marquis AR, Chee J, Wang RH, Mathur S, Dutta T, Marquez Chin, C. “Rehabilitation Engineering: Designing For Ability” – A summer outreach course for attracting talented high school students to the rehabilitation engineering field. IUPESM World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Toronto, ON, Jun 7-12, 2015.
- Owlia M, Ng C, Ledda K, Kamachi M, Longfield A, Dutta T. Preventing back injury in caregivers using real-time posture-based feedback. In Congress of the International Ergonomics Association 2018 Aug 26 (pp. 750-758). Springer, Cham.
- Kajaks T, Wee J, Orozco F, Longfield A, King EC, Holyoke P, Dutta T. PostureCoach: An immediate-feedback wearable posture coaching system. Proceedings of the Association of Canadian Ergonomists Conference, Waterloo, Canada, October 6, 2015.
- Kamachi M, Owlia M, Dutta T. Training Caregivers to Reduce Spine Flexion Using Biofeedback. In International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics 2019 Jul 24 (pp. 241-251). Springer, Cham.
Reports
- Cohen R.; Fernie G. and Roshan Fekr A. Monitoring fluid intake by commercially available smart water bottles. Sci Rep 12, 4402 (2022).
- Aga Z, King EC, Holliday PJ, Fernie GR, Dutta T (2011). Waverley Glen Freestanding Gantry Focus Group Findings Summary. For Prism Medical, Ltd.
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