Wandering Behaviors Detection for Dementia Patients: a Survey

Dementia is an age-associated impairment that could affect about 135 million people worldwide by the year 2050. People with dementia suffer from memory and orientation problems, which cause them to wander and get lost. Advances in technologies and connectivity can be leveraged to reduce the risk of unsafe wandering. In this paper, we present a survey of state-of-the-art technologies and methodologies, which are used for tracking and detection of wandering behaviors. The survey provides a compilation of the most related works in the literature and commercial fields, discusses their aspects and limitations, with the aim to benefit future efforts in this domain. We found that several approaches exist to tackle the problem of wandering, where most of the reviewed works tend to focus on the technical side, rather than adopting a user-centric design. We also observe that the commercial systems are lagging behind the research efforts, which can have a great impact if wisely applied in real world applications. Finally, we review the related sides of security, privacy and ethical concerns around the development of tracking systems, and present general recommendations for developing systems that respect these sides.