SMU and NTUC Health Co-operative Ltd (NHCL) Jointly Develop Smart Tech Attendance and Home Visit Recording System

NTUC Health Co-operative Ltd (NHCL) is one of the leading health and senior care service providers for dementia day care, nursing homes, home nursing/therapy/personal care services, senior activity centres, active aging hubs, cluster support, community befrienders, sheltered and senior group homes, dental clinics and family medical centres.

With the rapid increase in Singapore’s aging population, NTUC Health has set up multiple community programmes to enhance the biopsychosocial and mental wellbeing of the seniors. This enables seniors to age in place, in the comfort, safety and familiarity of their homes and community.

However, the coordination and management of large groups of seniors and volunteers across various programmes are currently performed via the conventional pen-and-power approach, which is extremely labor-intensive. Thus, the research project aims to use smart technology (such as Internet of Things and mobile pervasive computing) to provide automated, fine-grained sensor data of:

  1. seniors’ participation across various community programmes; and
  2. home visits that are conducted by befrienders.

Online algorithms will be applied to the sensor data to provide real-time information on the seniors’ participation levels in a scalable and resource-efficient manner. The analyzed data will provide actionable insights and recommendations on the types of activities that should be organized in the community to enable active ageing. In addition, the data will also enable NTUC Health to detect anomalies in behavioral patterns of the seniors – for instance, if they change their participation levels in the community programmes. Thus, the project can help NTUC Health to improve its operational efficiency, as well as care for the seniors.

Project Title: Smart Tech Attendance and Home Visit Recording System
Done By: NTUC Healthcare Co-operative (NHCL), Singapore Management University (SMU) and Singapore Data Science Consortium (SDSC)
Contact Person: Prof. Tan Hwee Pink, Associate Professor of Information Systems (Practice), Singapore Management University and Ng Boon Thai, Research Associate, SDSC