scholarly journals A Review and Classification of Assisted Living Systems

Information ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (7) ◽  
pp. 182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Byrne ◽  
Rem Collier ◽  
Gregory O’Hare

Europe’s social agenda for the “active elderly” is based upon a series of programs that provide a flexible infrastructure for their lives so that they are motivated, engaged in lifelong learning, and contributing to society. Economically speaking, Europe must engage in active aging research in order to avoid unsustainable health costs, and ambient assisted living (AAL) systems provide a platform for the elderly to remain living independently. This paper reviews research conducted within the area of AAL, and offers a taxonomy within which such systems may be classified. This classification distinguishes itself from others in that it categorises AAL systems in a top-down fashion, with the most important categories placed immediately to the left. In this paper, each section is explored further, and AAL systems are the focus. Entire AAL systems still cannot be fully evaluated, but their constituent technical parts can be assessed. The activities of daily living (ADLs) component was given further priority due to its potential for system evaluation, based on its ability to recognise ADLs with reasonable accuracy.

Healthcare ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 194
Author(s):  
Caroline A. Byrne ◽  
Michael O’Grady ◽  
Rem Collier ◽  
Gregory M. P. O’Hare

Activities of Daily Living systems (ADLs) and the User Interface (UI) design principles used to implement them empowers the elderly to continue living a normal daily routine. The daily monitoring of activities for most Assisted Living (AL) systems demands/necessitates accurate daily user interaction, and the design principles for these systems often focus on the UI usability for the elder, not the caregiver/family member. This paper reviews Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) and ADLs UI designs and evaluates the usability of ADLs visualisation tools for caregivers. Results indicate that the UI presenting information in a bar graph format was the preferred option for respondents, as 60% chose this summarisation method over the alternative line graph UI, which had 38% of respondents selecting this format for information representation. Therefore, when designing Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) UIs, it is recommended that short periods of time are best presented in a pie graph format in combination with a bar graph format for representing extended timeline information to caregivers about their loved ones.


2018 ◽  
pp. 1424-1439
Author(s):  
Philip Vance ◽  
Girijesh Prasad ◽  
Jim Harkin ◽  
Kevin Curran

Determining the location of individuals within indoor locations can be useful in various scenarios including security, gaming and ambient assisted living for the elderly. Healthcare services globally are seeking to allow people to stay in their familiar home environments longer due to the multitude of benefits associated with living in non-clinical environments and technologies to determine an individual's movements are key to ensuring that home emergencies are detected through lack of movement can be responded to promptly. This paper proposes a device-free localisation (DFL) system which would enable the individual to proceed with normal daily activities without the concern of having to wear a traceable device. The principle behind this is that the human body absorbs/reflects the radio signal being transmitted from a transmitter to one or more receiving stations. The proposed system design procedure facilitates the use of a minimum number of wireless nodes with the help of a principle component analysis (PCA) based intelligent signal processing technique. Results demonstrate that human detection and tracking are possible to within 1m resolution with a minimal hardware infrastructure.


The rise in life expectancy rate and dwindled birth rate in new age society has led to the phenomenon of population ageing which is being witnessed across the world from past few decades. India is also a part of this demographic transition which will have the direct impact on the societal and economic conditions of the country. In order to effectively deal with the prevailing phenomenon, stakeholders involved are coming up with the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) based ecosystem to address the needs of elderly people such as independent living, activity recognition, vital health sign monitoring, prevention from social isolation etc. Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) is one such ecosystem which is capable of providing safe and secured living environment for the elderly and disabled people. In this paper we will focus on reviewing the sensor based Human Activity Recognition (HAR) and Vital Health Sign Monitoring (VHSM) which is applicable for AAL environments. At first we generally describe the AAL environment. Next we present brief insights into sensor modalities and different deep learning architectures. Later, we survey the existing literature for HAR and VHSM based on sensor modality and deep learning approach used.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (18) ◽  
pp. 6051
Author(s):  
Daniel Fuentes ◽  
Luís Correia ◽  
Nuno Costa ◽  
Arsénio Reis ◽  
José Ribeiro ◽  
...  

The Portuguese population is aging at an increasing rate, which introduces new problems, particularly in rural areas, where the population is small and widely spread throughout the territory. These people, mostly elderly, have low income and are often isolated and socially excluded. This work researches and proposes an affordable Ambient Assisted Living (AAL)-based solution to monitor the activities of elderly individuals, inside their homes, in a pervasive and non-intrusive way, while preserving their privacy. The solution uses a set of low-cost IoT sensor devices, computer vision algorithms and reasoning rules, to acquire data and recognize the activities performed by a subject inside a home. A conceptual architecture and a functional prototype were developed, the prototype being successfully tested in an environment similar to a real case scenario. The system and the underlying concept can be used as a building block for remote and distributed elderly care services, in which the elderly live autonomously in their homes, but have the attention of a caregiver when needed.


10.2196/20215 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (11) ◽  
pp. e20215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxime Lussier ◽  
Aline Aboujaoudé ◽  
Mélanie Couture ◽  
Maxim Moreau ◽  
Catherine Laliberté ◽  
...  

Background Many older adults choose to live independently in their homes for as long as possible, despite psychosocial and medical conditions that compromise their independence in daily living and safety. Faced with unprecedented challenges in allocating resources, home care administrators are increasingly open to using monitoring technologies known as ambient assisted living (AAL) to better support care recipients. To be effective, these technologies should be able to report clinically relevant changes to support decision making at an individual level. Objective The aim of this study is to examine the concurrent validity of AAL monitoring reports and information gathered by care professionals using triangulation. Methods This longitudinal single-case study spans over 490 days of monitoring a 90-year-old woman with Alzheimer disease receiving support from local health care services. A clinical nurse in charge of her health and social care was interviewed 3 times during the project. Linear mixed models for repeated measures were used to analyze each daily activity (ie, sleep, outing activities, periods of low mobility, cooking-related activities, hygiene-related activities). Significant changes observed in data from monitoring reports were compared with information gathered by the care professional to explore concurrent validity. Results Over time, the monitoring reports showed evolving trends in the care recipient’s daily activities. Significant activity changes occurred over time regarding sleep, outings, cooking, mobility, and hygiene-related activities. Although the nurse observed some trends, the monitoring reports highlighted information that the nurse had not yet identified. Most trends detected in the monitoring reports were consistent with the clinical information gathered by the nurse. In addition, the AAL system detected changes in daily trends following an intervention specific to meal preparation. Conclusions Overall, trends identified by AAL monitoring are consistent with clinical reports. They help answer the nurse’s questions and help the nurse develop interventions to maintain the care recipient at home. These findings suggest the vast potential of AAL technologies to support health care services and aging in place by providing valid and clinically relevant information over time regarding activities of daily living. Such data are essential when other sources yield incomplete information for decision making.


Author(s):  
Aldo Franco Dragoni

In view of the rapidly progressive increase in the average population age, “Ambient Assisted Living” (AAL) defines the actions and policies needed to promote the improvement of living conditions within domestic spaces to foster autonomy, safety, and social inclusion for the elderly or disabled. The idea is to design an innovative and comprehensive information system for AAL, an ICT-based “Virtual Caregiver,” which is informed, intelligent and friendly, and which constantly monitors the health warning, informing and advising the elderly while controlling the environment and then asking for help when needed. The system will have the ability to establish interactive communication with the person but also extend it automatically outside the house in times of need. Virtual Caregiver will be able to enable the software protocols that activate the emergency phone calls to the family, medics or even first aid in emergencies.


Author(s):  
Panagiotis D. Bamidis ◽  
Evdokimos Konstantinidis ◽  
Antonis S. Billis ◽  
Anastasios Sioundas

Population ageing is an unprecedented challenge for human societies, which recently is globally tackled by new technologies. In this chapter technologies tailored for use by the elderly people termed ambient assisted living and e-health are discussed. Focus is only placed on those technologies that can be adapted for home use. Emphasis is drawn both on the technical front as well as on the application front based on recent literature. The scope is to make sure the audience reaches a sufficiently broad understanding of what technology is available for home use by elderly people. Applications and research efforts spent but also funded at the European level with a clear focus on those supported by elderly trials are provided. The chapter is enriched with case studies from various projects.


Author(s):  
Antonis S. Billis ◽  
Christos A. Frantzidis ◽  
Panagiotis D. Bamidis

Ambient assisted living environments comprise of “smart” components that play the role of a “guardian angel” for the seniors. Health monitoring algorithms have been widely presented in the literature, however in most of the cases, they examine contextual information and the production of alerts in case of an emergency. This short-term information, needs to be combined also with respective analysis in the long run. Integrating both types of temporal information regarding the health status of seniors, one can safeguard that both emergency detection and early diagnosis of health deterioration would lead to increase feelings of safety and quality of life to baby boomers. This chapter aims at presenting the open questions regarding health monitoring in AAL environments and proposes an approach that combines both contextual and long-term trends to characterize overall health.


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