IIITH Prof’s Proposal of Contactless Sleep Monitoring Application for Elderly Wins YFRF

The selective national research fellowship is backing the development of a low-cost smart mattress by Prof Aftab Hussain that can detect falls, track sleep, and improve elderly care – offering a privacy-first alternative to cameras and wearables. 

The sunset years come with their own set of challenges. Ageing is one of the key risk factors for falls. According to the WHO, older people have the highest risk of death or serious injury arising from a fall and the risk only increases with age. In fact monitoring the elderly during sleep is just as vital as keeping an eye on them while moving. It is the reason why elderly homes, hospitals and now even families employ nursing staff or attendants to monitor the well-being of elderly patients through the night. At IIIT-H, Prof. Aftab Hussain, Centre for VLSI and Embedded System Technologies, is particularly concerned about falls that go unnoticed. According to him, “In many cases, help arrives too late – not because care is unavailable, but because no one knows an incident has occurred.” His research project aims to change that with something deceptively simple – a mattress. 

MeITY’s Phase 2 Fellowships For Young Faculty
Prof. Hussain’s project proposal won him the Young Faculty Research Fellowship (YFRF) a component of the “Visvesvaraya PhD Scheme for Electronics and IT”, implemented by the Digital India Corporation under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeITy), Government of India. As per the Ministry’s website, the objective of the scheme is to promote R&D, create an innovative ecosystem, and enhance India’s competitiveness in the knowledge-intensive sectors of Electronics System Design & Manufacturing (ESDM) and IT/IT Enabled Services (IT/ITES). The YFRF is part of MeITY’s second-phase program (2021–2030) which has expanded beyond support to PhD candidates to include postdoctoral and faculty fellows, with a goal of selecting just 50 researchers over the decade. It is a highly selective initiative – one designed to back ideas with real societal impact and is amply demonstrated by the fact that only 24 fellowships have been awarded till date. 

Privacy and Practicality in Elderlycare Monitoring
In elderly care settings, monitoring patients is a delicate balance. Cameras can track movement, but at the cost of dignity and privacy. Wearables can detect falls, but only if they’re worn consistently. Besides, they’re generally uncomfortable. Neither solution is ideal. Meanwhile, the consequences of missed incidents are severe. Early intervention after a fall can make all the difference – but only if the fall is detected.

An Intelligent Mattress
Prof. Hussain’s proposed alternative requires embedding sensor technology directly into a mattress topper. No cameras, no devices to wear, no behavioural changes required. “The mattress itself will tell you if someone has fallen off the bed,” he remarks. Using flexible pressure sensors, the system continuously monitors how a person lies, moves, and shifts during sleep. It can detect not only falls, but also early warning signs. “For instance if there is more pressure at the edge of the mattress, that means that they’re about to fall.” This predictive capability is powered by AI models currently under development, trained on real-world data to distinguish normal movement from risk patterns.

A Broader Picture Beyond Falls
Beyond fall detection, the mattress will provide a comprehensive picture of the patient’s well being. “It can be used to track a variety of metrics such as sleep patterns, bed entry and exit times, frequency of nighttime movement, as well as prolonged immobility which is a risk factor for bed sores,” explains Prof. Hussain. In this way, the mattress becomes a passive health monitoring system without demanding anything from the user. 

Building For Scale
One of the key factors driving this research is affordability. Unlike many healthcare technologies that remain confined to premium settings, this solution is being designed for widespread deployment. “We’re hopefully going for a large amount of volume, that can be scalable across entire care facilities  and trying to see how we can keep it as low cost as possible,” says Prof. Hussain, elaborating that the design itself has been simplified to accommodate a thin film form to capture application of pressure points accurately. 

Incidentally, the idea emerged as a result of collaboration with an elderly care center, located nearby. “They’re the ones who actually came up with the problem and requested a solution,” notes the professor. That collaboration has already produced early prototypes, with ongoing testing and iterations. A published paper documents the initial concept, though the design has since evolved significantly.

With fellowship support, the team hopes to accelerate development – refining hardware, improving comfort, and finalizing AI algorithms. In a world where healthcare technology often feels intrusive or complicated, the smartest solutions might be the ones that go unnoticed, quietly working in the background, protecting the most vulnerable.