Energy management for devices supporting dementia patients

The advances in medicine and the improvements in healthcare have provided treatment and cure for many pathologies and awarded a larger expectancy of life. It represents a considerable improvement in ensuring treatment for diseases otherwise mortal and thus becoming, in some cases, chronic disorders that a person can live with for many years. This evolution has a tremendous impact in the overall healthcare environment and thus promoting longer life expectancy especially in developed countries. It is necessary, however, to consider that by increasing the width of the top level of the aging pyramid, it is therefore expected an increased incidence of the ageing related disorders. In that matter, the raising prevalence of Dementia cases is noticeable and is among the most prominent worries for the health community, as expressed in the World Health Organization reports. It is therefore of major relevance to provide assistance to citizens with dementia, especially in what concerns with losing cognitive functions such as the notion of self, awareness of current location and identifying the need to return home or to known places. The present research work is bases on the usage of smartphones to track people and has a specific target, in this matter, in extending battery life and for that matter the time a person can be located and assisted. The strategy, applicable to smartphones or other devices, relies on ensuring that energy is wisely managed so that batteries have an extended duration, increasing the chances that devices are still connected and accessible when most needed, such as while a person is experiencing a wandering episode. The aim of the present work is to focus on energy consumption to increase the chances to locate a person that is lost, with limited cognitive functions and most likely at risk for health or when even survival could be endangered.