The seat is aimed at disabled patients and elderly, who suffer from bad posture and are exposed to higher fall risk. It constitutes a valid help to monitor sitting position and sedentary behaviour and to potentially reduce the effects of falls due to standing-up attempts. These problems have serious consequences: the back pain could cause a decrease in the life quality and, more generally, sedentarity increases the risk of all causes of mortality in the older adults [1], while the elderly falling problem is a well-known issue, that is especially dangerous when the fallen person is not assisted within a reasonable time.
Our seat is quite cheap and easy to use, with low maintenance required, so it could be used all over the world.
The device is composed by a seat and a smartphone application. The main parts of the seat are a microcontroller, four load cells to calculate the Centre of Pressure (C.o.P.) and four vibrant actuators. The seat has a metallic body covered above and below by pillows, which make it adaptable to most of the chair models.
The seat is connected to a smartphone application. The app could give the patient, the physician or the caregiver a real time feedback and visualization of the performances of the elderly and store the records. A vibrant feedback is given every time the user is not sit in a proper way (according to a threshold statistically chosen). Thanks to machine learning algorithms, if the patient is not getting up properly, so there is a falling risk, the app may send an alarm message to a saved number to warn the caregiver of a probable fall. The app can also evaluate total sitting time and average posture quality to alert of bad sedentary behaviors.