Location Detection of Dementia Using GPS Coordinate Finder

Gerontology problems affect many old citizens at the age of 67 years old and above. Many people become forgetful as they become older and one of the problems is dementia. Memory impairments are the most common among people with dementia. Dementia can happen to anybody, but it is more common after the age of 65 years. It causes a loss of mental ability, and other symptoms. Dementia can be caused by various disorders which affect parts of the brain involved with thought processes. People with dementia do not remember how to get back home and there is no specialized device to assist family members to take care of their elders in Malaysia. Thus, this project aims to identify tracking system that is suitable for dementia and to develop an application to help relatives to track dementia’s location. This scope is to find the location of dementia and to help relatives to track dementia’s location using GPS tracker and coordinate finder application. This paper discussed about the location detection of the GPS in order to track for dementia’s location for the wide range of network with the accessibility of the Internet network. This system will help relatives to track the location of the people with dementia and to reduce the burden of family member to take care of dementia people. Additionally, the GPS will detect the location and send the message to receiver to inform the current coordinate location. MIT AppInventor is used in developing the Android Application and tested with a smart phone. This paper describes the system designed of GPS and application, and discussed the implementation of the system to the dementia people. Positive results are received from the conducted user perception study and shows that users (family members) are satisfied with the application in identifying dementia’s location effectively