Mobile services infrastructure for frailty diagnosis support based on Gower's similarity coefficient and treemaps

Issue title: Internet of Things

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Fontecha, Jesús | Hervás, Ramón | Bravo, José

Affiliations: MAmI Research Lab, Castilla-La Mancha University, Ciudad Real, Spain

Note: [] Corresponding author: Jesús Fontecha, MAmI Research Lab, Esc. Sup. de Informática, Paseo de la Universidad, 4 13071 Ciudad Real, Spain. E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract: The early detection and diagnosis of frailty is important in improving the quality of elderly life. Physicians must take many factors into account to achieve an objective and standardised method of frailty assessment. In this work, we present a novel mobile service infrastructure to improve the accuracy of frailty diagnosis in a population of elders, focusing on the main frailty risk factors and applying similarity algorithms based on Gower's coefficient. In addition, we have developed a mobile application to obtain the assessment results from the implemented services. The results are displayed on the mobile device using hierarchical visualisation structures known as treemaps. The system has been evaluated as a frailty diagnosis tool in a group of elderly patients.

Keywords: Frailty, elderly people, mobile service, similarity coefficient, treemap visualisation

DOI: 10.3233/MIS-130174

Journal: Mobile Information Systems, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 127-146, 2014