Using Twitter to Monitor Electrical Devices to Augment the Safety of Older Adults Living at Home

Memory-related problems are common among elder Americans and could result in an unsafe home environment. The Twitter infrastructure is an cost-effective way to automate the regulation of home electronics to increase patient safety, enabling them to live at home and avoid premature institutionalization. This innovative project demonstrates how caregivers will monitor electrical appliances in the homes of older adults from anywhere in the world by sending tweets from a computer or cell phone. Any electronic device that needed to be monitored was connected to an outlet through an X10 appliance module (available commercially). Next, two Twitter accounts were created and made to follow one another. Two Java programs were written: one to pull direct messages from the receiving account and carry out commands (using X10's ActiveHome Pro Software), and the other one to update the receiving account's status every time the on-off status of an appliance changed. Next, an electrical appliance was plugged into an X10 appliance module, and the controller was connected to the computer running the Java programs. Finally, we used the transmitting account and a cell phone to test the programs. The device was tested by minute-by-minute status monitoring of a lamp and fan over a seven day period in the homes of two older adults with excellent results. Older Americans desire to live in their own homes. Effective use of social media technology can help the caregivers of older adults monitor their home safety effectively and economically.