Proper nutrition is very important for the well-being and independence of elderly people. A significant loss of body weight or a decrease of the Body Mass Index respectively is an indicator for malnutrition. A continuous monitoring of the BMI enables doctors and nutritionists to intervene on impending malnutrition. However, continuous monitoring of the BMI by professionals is not applicable and self-monitoring not reliable. In this article a method for monitoring the trend of the BMI based on ambient sensors is introduced. The ambient sensors are used to measure the time a person spends for preparing meals at home. When the trend of the average time for 4 weeks changes, so does the trend of the BMI for those 4 weeks. Both values show a very strong correlation. Thus, the average time for preparing a meal is a suitable indicator for doctors and nutritionists to examine the patient further, become aware of an impending malnutrition, and intervene at an early stage of malnutrition. The method has been tested on a real-world dataset collected during a 10-month field study with 20 participants of an age of about 85 years.

中文翻译：

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检测家庭智能家居环境中即将发生的老年人营养不良

适当的营养对老年人的幸福和独立非常重要。体重显着下降或体重指数下降分别是营养不良的指标。对 BMI 的持续监测使医生和营养师能够干预即将发生的营养不良。然而，专业人士对BMI的持续监测并不适用，自我监测也不可靠。本文介绍了一种基于环境传感器监测BMI趋势的方法。环境传感器用于测量一个人在家准备饭菜所花费的时间。当 4 周平均时间的趋势发生变化时，这 4 周的 BMI 趋势也会发生变化。这两个值都显示出非常强的相关性。因此，准备膳食的平均时间是医生和营养师进一步检查患者、了解即将发生的营养不良并在营养不良的早期进行干预的合适指标。该方法已经在 10 个月的实地研究中收集的真实世界数据集上进行了测试，该研究有 20 名年龄约为 85 岁的参与者。