Researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) have selected Elpas RTLS for a pilot study of personal hygiene behavior in the home. Elpas RTLS will be used to determine whether real-time location data will be able to unobtrusively provide accurate information about an individual’s every day hygiene activities over extended periods of time.
The selected Elpas Hygiene Monitoring Solution combines Active RFID Wrist and Asset Tags, RF Tracking Readers and LF Exciters to accurately define sub-room areas such as bathroom sinks, toilets and showers. The tags when worn by the participants and attached to various home hygiene objects such as toothpaste and soap dispensers will enable researchers to infer behavior practices based on the simultaneous co-location of the participant and the tagged hygiene objects.
Elpas was selected from other competing RTLS systems due to its ability to identify key behaviors of multiple people within a household, by locating people and objects to small zones within rooms. Elpas was also able to provide application specific Active RFID Tags with a long battery life (to avoid the need to interact with participants on a regular basis to change batteries), ability to access the data remotely, and being relatively cost effective compared to other options.
Elpas RTLS will provide behavioral measurement reports relating to the daily hygiene activities (such as hand washing, bathing, toilet usage, oral hygiene and vitamin ingestion by family member, location and time). Researchers also intend to use Elpas to investigate ways to promote healthy habits as a way to achieving sustainable improvements to health related behaviors.
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