scholarly journals Ambient Assisted Living as Support for Aging in Place: Quantitative Users’ Acceptance Study on Ultrasonic Whistles (Preprint)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Biermann ◽  
Julia Offermann-van Heek ◽  
Simon Himmel ◽  
Martina Ziefle
Keyword(s):  
Home Care ◽  
Assisted Living ◽  
Emergency Service ◽  
Aging In Place ◽  
Ambient Assisted Living ◽  
Minor Role ◽  
Living Room ◽  
Home Automation ◽  
Skilled Workers ◽  
Care Needs

BACKGROUND Given the fact of an aging society, new supply measures and living concepts are needed, especially as health impairments along with care dependency increase with age. As many elderly people wish to stay at home for as long as possible, ambient assisted living (AAL) represents a support for aging in place. OBJECTIVE AAL combines medical and care technology within living environments and is, therefore, a promising approach to cope with demographic change in terms of fast-growing care needs and fewer skilled workers. Ultrasonic whistles represent one innovative technical possibility for such supportive housing solutions. Central fields of application are home automation, emergency service, and positioning. As AAL technologies affect sensitive areas of life, it is of great interest under which conditions they are accepted or rejected, taking individual user requirements into account. Hence, the aim of this study was to investigate users’ perception and evaluation of ultrasonic whistles. METHODS In this study, we examined the acceptance of ultrasonic whistles in home care by function and room using a Web-based questionnaire. Besides an evaluation of the overall usefulness, we focused on the intention to use ultrasonic whistles; 270 participants assessed home automation, emergency service, and positioning as specific functions of ultrasonic whistles. Furthermore, bathroom, bedroom, and living room were evaluated as specific usage locations (rooms). With regard to the user’s perspective, the focus was set on age and attitudes toward aging of care receivers. RESULTS This study revealed a significant influence of function (F2,269=60.444; P<.001), room (F2,269=41.388; P<.001), and the interaction of function and room (F4,269=8.701; P<.001) on the acceptance of ultrasonic whistles. The use of emergency services within the bathroom represented the most accepted alternative, whereas positioning within the living room received the comparably lowest evaluations. Although user diversity played a minor role for acceptance overall, the assessment of single applications differed among user groups, particularly with regard to age differences (F20,500=1.988; P<.01) in the evaluation of specific installation options such as automated doors. CONCLUSIONS The study revealed profound insights into the user-centered assessment of ultrasonic whistles in home care and discovered function and room as influencing acceptance parameters. Concerning user characteristics, age, and attitude toward aging partly affected these evaluations, forming the basis for and showing the importance of further investigations in this context.

An Ambient Assisted Living platform for supporting aging in place of pre-frail and frail older adults: Rationale, HomeAssist plaform, quasi-experimental design, and baseline characteristics. (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
helene sauzeon ◽  
Arlette Edjolo ◽  
Hélène Amieva ◽  
Charles Consel ◽  
Karine Pérès
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Assisted Living ◽  
Independent Living ◽  
Aging In Place ◽  
Ambient Assisted Living ◽  
Large Set ◽  
Everyday Functioning ◽  
Frail Older Adults ◽  
Outcomes Measures ◽  
Quasi Experimental

UNSTRUCTURED Background: Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) technology is expected as a promising way for prolonging the aging in place. Very few evidence-based results are provided support to its real value, notably for frail older adults who have high risk of autonomy loss and of entering in nursing home. Objective: HomeAssist (HA) is a human-centered AAL platform offering a large set of applications for three main age-related need domains (Activities of Daily Living, Safety and Social participation), relying on a basic set of entities (sensors, actuators...). The HA intervention involves monitoring as well as assistive services to support independent living at home. The primary outcomes measures are related to aging in place in terms of effectiveness (institutionalization and hospitalization rates) and efficiency (everyday functioning indices). Secondary outcomes measures include indices of frailty, cognitive functioning, and psychosocial health of participants and their caregivers. Every 6 months, user experience and attitudes towards HA are also collected in equipped participants. Concomitantly, HA usages are collected. Methods: A study assessing the HA efficacy has been designed and is now conducted with 131 older adults aged 81.9 (±6.0) years (from autonomous to frail) who lived alone. The study design is quasi-experimental with a duration of 12 months optionally extensible to 24 months. It includes equipped participants, matched with non-equipped participants (n= 474). Follow-up assessments occurred at 0, 12 and 24 months. Results: The expected results are to inform the AAL value for independent living, but also to yield informed analysis on AAL usages and adoption in frail older individuals.

A Collaborative Workflow for Computer-Aided Design in Ambient Assisted Living: The ASIM Project

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-360
Author(s):  
Nicolas Ferry ◽  
Pascal Berruet ◽  
Willy Allegre ◽  
Laurent Augu
Keyword(s):  
Assisted Living ◽  
Computer Aided Design ◽  
Ambient Assisted Living ◽  
Health State ◽  
Home Automation ◽  
Industrial Countries ◽  
Model Driven ◽  
Biomedical Monitoring ◽  
Control Command ◽  
Aided Design

AbstractIn 2014, the worldwide context is that the population is increasingly both expanding and aging in industrial countries. In contrast, the personal health levels of individuals could decrease. Although retirement homes and health-care centers assume most of the demand, they will most probably overflow in the next few years. One of the current solutions is e-Health, which involves biomedical monitoring but also home automation functions to compensate for disabilities that tend to increase with age. In this context, several domains have to be merged while respecting the entire ecosystem: the users, their needs and environment, but also all the various actors/experts involved in this process. The issue, however, is that enormous effort is required to combine the multiple expert domains because these can be antinomic. Hence, this paper proposes a collaborative workflow that brings together these different actors and generates the control/command application. Applying model-driven engineering, this workflow makes a clear distinction between people’s health requirements, the home automation functions, and the user interface points of view. Thus, it allows experts in each field to adapt their system in terms of the user’s needs, disability, and health state.

scholarly journals Dementia Home Care Resources: How Are We Managing?

2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Ward-Griffin ◽  
Jodi Hall ◽  
Ryan DeForge ◽  
Oona St-Amant ◽  
Carol McWilliam ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Home Care ◽  
Aging In Place ◽  
Home Care Services ◽  
Case Managers ◽  
Dementia Care ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Formal Care ◽  
Care Needs ◽  
Equal Distribution ◽  
Care Services

With the number of people living with dementia expected to more than double within the next 25 years, the demand for dementia home care services will increase. In this critical ethnographic study, we drew upon interview and participant data with persons with dementia, family caregivers, in-home providers, and case managers in nine dementia care networks to examine the management of dementia home care resources. Three interrelated, dialectical themes were identified: (1)finite formal care-inexhaustible familial care,(2)accessible resources rhetoric-Iinaccessible resources reality,and (3)diminishing care resources-increasing care needs. The development of policies and practices that provideavailable, accessible, andappropriateresources, ensuringequitable, not necessarily equal, distribution of dementia care resources is required if we are to meet the goal of aging in place now and in the future.

scholarly journals xAAL: A Distributed Infrastructure for Heterogeneous Ambient Devices

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christophe Lohr ◽  
Philippe Tanguy ◽  
Jérôme Kerdreux
Keyword(s):  
Assisted Living ◽  
Ambient Assisted Living ◽  
Network Protocols ◽  
Living Systems ◽  
Home Automation ◽  
Distributed Architecture ◽  
Sensors And Actuators ◽  
Message Bus ◽  
Distributed Infrastructure ◽  
Or Applications

AbstractAmbient assisted living systems are based on sensors and actuators, with a diversity of network protocols and vendors. This commonly leads to the introduction of gateways or middlewares into the technical infrastructure in order to address interoperability issues. The xAAL framework presented in this paper aims to provide interoperability and to redesign such “gateways” into well-defined functional entities communicating with each other via a lightweight message bus over IP. Each entity may have multiple instances, may be shared between several boxes, and may be physically located in any box. Thanks to the distributed architecture of the system, each home automation vendor may peacefully provide its own xAAL box without revealing details of its technology. Also, several applications may be plugged together on the xAAL bus without getting bored with underlying heterogeneity. Moreover, the management of the dynamicity allows sensors or applications to enter and leave the system at any time.

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