Patent ID: 7619533

Claim:
A method for monitoring a person, comprising the steps of: (a) creating a schedule for the person; (b) beginning to monitor the person using a monitoring device from a starting time to an ending time; (c) collecting a positional locations for the person at each reporting interval over an initial reporting frequency period from the starting time, the positional locations collected during this initial reporting frequency period defining a first set of positional locations; (d) transferring the first set of positional locations for the person from the monitoring device to a computer; (e) conducting a loitering test during the initial reporting frequency period using the following steps: (i) analyzing each of the positional locations collected at each reporting interval during the initial reporting frequency period by comparing each subsequent positional location to the previous positional location; (ii) providing that if each subsequent positional location during the initial reporting frequency period is at the same location or all of the positional locations collected during the initial reporting frequency period are within a locational range from one another, the person is loitering, and comparing the first set of positional locations to the schedule if the person is loitering; (iii) providing that if each subsequent positional location during the initial reporting frequency period is not at the same location or all of the positional locations during the initial reporting frequency period are not within the locational range from one another, the person is not loitering, and skipping any comparison of the first set of positional locations to the schedule if the person is not loitering: (f) collecting the positional location for the person at each reporting interval over each next subsequent reporting frequency period until the ending time; (g) repeating the loitering test for each next subsequent reporting frequency period until the ending time; and (h) generating a report of the analysis from the starting time to the ending time.