A new motion-based tool for occupation and monitoring of residents in nursing homes

<p>This research received a financial support from the grant n°ANR- 11-IDFI-0033, obtained from IDEFI by the Réseau des Écoles de Management et d’In- génierie de la Santé (www.idefi-remis.fr), a network of schools in health management and engineering. I am immensely grateful to the specialist in psychomotricity for sharing her wisdom with us during this research. I am also grateful La Retraite, a nursing home in Angers, France, for its collaboration. I thank Paul Richard for his contribution (primary transla- tor).</p>International audience<p>Population ageing bring new challenges in healthcare and has raised issues concerning innovative solutions to optimize the management of elderly. As recommended, new interactive tools must be accessible to users, acceptable, easy to use, motivating and useful for both residents and staff. Virtual Reality is a good candidate to fulfill these specifications. Based on our expertise in Human Computer Interaction and Neuropsychology of ageing, we are developing a platform to offer interactive activities adapted to very-old and dependent people living in nursing homes. It is based on the use of a low-cost markerless RGB-D sensor (AstraTM, Orbbec) to track user body motion. Implemented activities were designed to involve various cognitive abilities, such as sorting game, search game, ball game. In addition, a module records several biomechanical data and generates reports for caregivers. This paper aims to discuss the special needs of research context and to present the designed interaction platform.