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Use of Body Sensor Networks in Clinical Settings and Medical Research
Published in Mohammad Ilyas, Sami S. Alwakeel, Mohammed M. Alwakeel, el-Hadi M. Aggoune, Sensor Networks for Sustainable Development, 2017
Carlo Alberto Boano, Felix Jonathan Oppermann, Kay Römer
With a silver tsunami, that is, a large number of retiring elders [147] that will soon exhaust the capacity of current hospitals, body sensor networks (BSNs) play a crucial role in shifting the monitoring of noncritical patients outside of hospital facilities, with a consequent reduction of healthcare expenses. As they offer the possibility to continuously monitor the vital signs of patients at their homes, enhancing prevention and allowing an early detection of diseases [157], BSNs have been widely used to build residential monitoring and assisted-living solutions for elderly care. BSNs have also been used to monitor patients with chronic conditions (i.e., patients with long-lasting or recurrent diseases) remotely, which helps in reducing the large expenditure of healthcare resources dedicated to chronic care [58].
Aspects of Ambient Assisted Living and Its Applications
Published in B.K. Tripathy, J. Anuradha, Internet of Things (IoT), 2017
Many activity recognition systems are developed for assisted living. The three major requirements for an assisted living system which need to be met in order to fulfill its purpose and potential to assist vulnerable people are: (1) High acceptance: system needs to be ambient and unobtrusive. (2) Adaptation: able to adapt to changing situations or abilities of the individual and environment to satisfy individual needs. (3) High usability: services must be provided in an accessible way (Kleinberger et al. (2007). The three characteristics can be viewed from two perspectives, namely practical and technical aspects. The aim of the practical aspect is to satisfy the needs in term of practicality, that is, high usability and acceptance. Several studies on perceptions toward assisted living technology (Chernbumroong et al. 2010; Demiris et al. 2004, 2008) have identified concerns arising from the use of technology for elderly care such as user acceptance, system cost, usability, and privacy issues. For example, a system which requires users to wear special equipment may be perceived as too complicated to use, resulting in low acceptance. In a mobility-aided system (Yu et al. 2003), for example, the user interface is a critical requirement as it has direct physical interaction with the users. An interview-based investigation by Demiris et al. (2004, 2008) also showed that the elderly were concerned about privacy violation, visibility, and accuracy of the assisted living systems. Even if systems could deliver the best services for assisting people, unless they are easily accessible and usable and address the real needs and concerns of the users, they will not be accepted. The cost of assisted living systems is another important issue. For a practical solution in assisted living, the systems need to be cost-effective to make it affordable for the general population, especially the elderly who may be on benefits or pensions. From a technical aspect, the aim is to enable assisted living systems to become intelligent in order to adaptively assist the elderly in changing a dynamic environment. Systems with such aims are also referred to as ambient intelligent systems or smart homes (Aarts 2004). Ambient intelligence technology used in assisted living solutions can provide some hands-on support based on current user status to maintain elderly people’s independence, reducing the health care cost while increasing quality of life (Kleinberger et al. 2007). To offer intelligent services, the key is to understand user environments such as surrounding temperature and users activities in order to provide adaptive assistance to users. In this study, we are interested in understanding the user’s current activities which are often referred to as activity recognition.
Personal, Social and Regulatory Factors Associated With Telecare Acceptance by Hong Kong Older Adults: An Indication of Governmental Role in Facilitating Telecare Adoption
Published in International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 2023
Lu Peng, Siu Shing Man, Alan H. S. Chan, Jacky Y. K. Ng
In the context of Hong Kong, the need to strengthen the use of technology for elderly care services has been brought out as one of the 20 recommendations set out in the Elderly Commission's “Elderly Services Programme Plan” released in mid-2017 (Legislative Council Secretariat of Hong Kong, 2018). However, the emphases of the government have been put on the research projects and community care centre rather than end user. For example, some funding schemes (such as Innovation and Technology Fund (ITF), Midstream Research Programme for Universities, Innovation and Technology Fund for Better Living) have been set to provide financial support for the research/technology projects relating to elderly care. A scheme of Innovation and Technology Fund for Application in Elderly and Rehabilitation Care supports each community care centre with a maximum grant of between HK$200,000 and HK$500,000 for procuring technology products. At present, some of the elderly care products and technologies (such as video chat technology to enable video conference and RFID readers to assist the elderly by reading out public notices or posters) have been developed and have notably been put for demonstration, pilot use or testing (Legislative Council Secretariat of Hong Kong, 2018). Overall, the adoption of gerontechnology solutions or telecare products is not yet extensive in Hong Kong. Though the government has attempted to publish incentive policies to promote elderly care services, such measures have not yet widely permeated to the personal purchase of telecare products. Even so, the detected significant positive association between perceived incentives and attitude toward telecare usage indicated that public regulation of providing incentives will be effective in promoting telecare adoption among older adults.