| 摘要 |
This embodiment of the invention consists of an apparatus or home appliance unit embodied in a hardware entity running an embedded software program connected to a server computer via a phone line or high-speed internet. At home, the apparatus communicates with an optional set of medical health monitoring devices such as but not limited to, blood pressure monitors, blood glucose meters, and pulse oximeters using wired or wireless communications methods in order to perform wellness measurement. The illustrated embodiments of the invention provide a novel user interface on the home appliance to make the system accessible to people with disabilities. The simple user interface is designed to be accessible to people who are blind or deaf or people who cannot use their hands and require an alternative interface device such as a sip & puff controller. For the hearing impaired, the interface duplicates all speech and informational sounds with text or graphic cues. For the Blind, a Rotary knob provides tactile and audio feedback as the user navigates the system options. As every clockwise or counter-clockwise rotation of the knob brings a new option into focus, the user feels the click of the knob, and hears several audio cues including an audible click, a unique musical chime and a spoken description of the selectable option. For people who cannot use their hands to rotate the knob, alternative input controller devices, (such as a sip & puff controller) are supported through wired (such as but not limited to USB) or wireless (such as but not limited to Bluetooth, Zigbee IEEE 802.15.4, Z-Wave, Wi-Fi) connections. The home unit can further monitor wellness activity of the care recipient by pegging the number of times the care recipient passes by a infra-red motion sensor. The filtering of the latter information and subsequent integration over time and comparison with historical counts per unit of time within a 24 hour period can determine the normal activity pattern for the care recipient over the previous 24 hours.
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