The Use of Workflow Analysis to Characterize Patterns of Older Adults’ Daily Activities
Year: 2017
Type: conference-abstract
Abstract: Aging is often associated with disruptions in the performance of daily activities. Despite considerable efforts to accurately assess older adults’ functional abilities, there is a lack of methods to characterize the ordered tasks performed by individuals to achieve a particular goal within a home environment. Workflow analysis has the potential to examine procedural aspects of daily activities and detect early changes in activities that may indicate functional deterioration among older adults. We aimed to apply the workflow analysis to older adults’ daily activity data to examine the patterns of and variability in their activities. Six community-dwelling older adults filled out an activity diary for 14 consecutive days on which they recorded the location and type of activities performed inside and outside the home every 30 minutes. The EventFlow, a novel visualization tool, was used to analyze daily routine based on 1453 events. The analysis revealed great variability in activity types, levels, and timing of performing certain activities across individuals. Normal day-to-day variation in the same individual was also detected, including sleep time, time to go to bed, and time to get up from bed. When applied to the spatial information of activity, the analysis suggested variability related to individuals’ mobility in different level of life spaces from home to community. Findings suggest that the workflow approach can allow researchers to observe lifestyle alterations and to detect changes indicating deteriorating health before these changes significantly affect older adults’ quality of life.
Source: Innovation in Aging
Authors: J. Chung, M. Ozkaynak, G. Demiris
Language: English
Subfield: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,977
OpenAlex ID: W2733553782