Did you remember to brush?: a noninvasive wearable approach to recognizing brushing teeth for elderly care

Abstract

Failing to brush one's teeth regularly can have surprisingly serious health consequences, from periodontal disease to coronary heart disease to pancreatic cancer. This problem is especially worrying when caring for the elderly and/or individuals with dementia, as they often forget or are unable to perform standard health activities such as brushing their teeth, washing their hands, and taking medication. To ensure that such individuals are correctly looked after they are placed under the supervision of caretakers or family members, simultaneously limiting their independence and placing an immense burden on their family members and caretakers. To address this problem we developed a non-invasive wearable system based on a wrist-mounted accelerometer to accurately identify when a person brushed their teeth. We tested the efficacy of our system with a month-long in-the-wild study and achieved an accuracy of 94% and an F-measure of 0.82.