Overview

As global healthcare costs increase, more and more emphasis is being placed on personal health management as a means to proactively reduce the risk of health issues and, therefore, reduce the number of doctor and/or hospital visits. Tracking one's daily activity is growing in popularity due largely to its simple yet effective impact on promoting a healthy lifestyle. Extremes of activity monitoring extend from monitors such as pedometers, which track walking, running, and simple exercise, where counting steps can determine how many calories have been burned, to fall detectors, which are predominantly used for monitoring elderly people to both report and prevent falls from occurring. Besides standalone activity monitoring devices, this functionality has been integrated into a variety of home healthcare devices.