Physical Function Monitoring Systems for Community-Dwelling Elderly Living Alone: A Comprehensive Review

Objective: This study aims to conduct a comprehensive review of monitoring systems to monitor and manage physical function of community-dwelling elderly living alone and suggest future directions of unobtrusive monitoring. Design: Literature review Methods: The importance of health-related monitoring has been emphasized due to the aging population and novel corona virus (COVID-19) outbreak.As the population gets old and because of changes in culture, the number of single-person households among the elderly is expected to continue to increase. Elders are staying home longer and their physical function may decline rapidly,which can be a disturbing factorto successful aging.Therefore, systematic elderly management must be considered. Results: Frequently used technologies to monitor elders at home included red, green, blue (RGB) camera, accelerometer, passive infrared (PIR) sensor, wearable devices, and depth camera. Of them all, considering privacy concerns and easy-to-use features for elders, depth camera possibly can be a technology to be adapted at homes to unobtrusively monitor physical function of elderly living alone.The depth camera has been used to evaluate physical functions during rehabilitation and proven its efficiency. Conclusions: Therefore, physical monitoring system that is unobtrusive should be studied and developed in the future to monitor physical function of community-dwelling elderly living alone for the aging population.