Paper: Continuous Audiovisual Capture of Behavior in a Dementia Unit: Recruitment and Ethical Challenges Bharucha, A.J., Presentation by Dr. Ashok Bharucha at the 58th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Gerontological Society of America, Orlando, Florida, November 20, 2005 Abstract:   CareMedia is an interdisciplinary, collaborative effort focusing on capturing a continuous audiovisual record of daily life in nursing home dementia units, and applying computer machine intelligence technology to automatically process that record for efficient use by analytical observers (e.g., social and behavioral scientists, geriatricians, and healthcare policymakers) to monitor and enhance residents’ situational behavior and quality of life. The record is processed with data reduction and extraction technologies that recognize faces and speech, track moving individuals, and identify social interactions. The automated audiovisual record provides a level of completeness not feasible with human observers, and will allow, for the first time, large-scale longitudinal research that captures the full range of the biopsychosocial context in elder care settings, thus refining ecological, ethnographic, qualitative and quantitative aspects of research methodology. However, continuous video recording in public spaces of a skilled nursing facility is a sensitive matter. Recruitment of study participants and ethical issues are explicitly and proactively addressed to engage the larger social concerns, thereby protecting the basic interests of participants and other important stakeholders. Specifically, we address the need to safeguard and protect the privacy and welfare interests of a potentially vulnerable group balanced by the need to develop tools to serve the distinctive needs of what continues to be an underserved population. Our goal is to advance the social understanding of the needs of the elderly, and of policies that are necessary to ensure that valuable scientific and therapeutic goals can be pursued without compromising basic social values. Close