Health parameters correlation in an IoT monitoring, evaluation and analysis framework for elderly

In the present, in European countries, the elderly population is growing and elderly health has attracted more and more attention. An elderly person can be seen from a perspective that includes continuous and personalized, active and preventive care, supported by healthcare professionals and digital technologies. The monitoring and evaluation of elderly health status can be performed with the help of the Internet of Things (IoT), clinical health indicators and quality of life questionnaires. In this paper, an elderly monitoring, evaluation and analysis framework is proposed based on an IoT monitoring system, medical investigations and quality of life questionnaires. In this framework, an elderly health parameters analysis model is presented. We define, in the model, a new elderly overall health index used for analysis. In order to obtain this index, a multi-criteria method is used. Then for every pair of parameters considered in the framework, the Spearman correlation coefficient is calculated. Correlation coefficients are used to assess the strength and direction of the linear relationships between pairs of parameters. A comparison between Spearman, Pearson and Kendall correlation coefficients is realized. For model validation, a case study is presented.