The Use of Smart Watches to Monitor Heart Rates in Elderly People: A Complementary Approach

Heart failure is a significant concern for elderly people. Serious problems can result if elderly people do not take appropriate action to prevent medical issues. As a solution, smart watches can be used to monitor heart rate. These devices can also allow families, relatives, friends and health-care providers to visualise the heart rate data via a smartphone application or online website. Smart watches have limited functionality, and experiments were conducted to test the functionality they provide to elderly persons, including heart rate monitoring. The results show that there is currently no proactive action that can be taken when an abnormal heart rate occurs. This paper proposes a complementary approach using a knowledge-based system with rule-based reasoning to improve and enhance the services delivered by smart watches used to monitor heart rates.