Home-Healthcare-Network (H2N): An autonomous care-giving system for elderly people

Abstract

As the world's population ages, the number of elderly people suffering from various diseases increases. Due to a variety of reasons such as convenience or a need for security and privacy these elderly people generally prefer to avail healthcare facilities at their home. Advances in ubiquitous computing and wireless sensor networking have opened up new opportunities in healthcare systems. In-home pervasive networks may assist residents by providing memory enhancement, remote control of home appliances, medical data lookup and emergency communication. This is time to break through the physical boundaries of hospitals and bring healthcare facilities to the homes. Wireless and internet-based healthcare devices can play a vital role in this regard given that reliable, individualized systems with user-friendly interfaces are developed to enable elderly people feel comfortable with making use of novel technology. This paper presents Home Healthcare Network (H2N), a complete system integrating the abundance of existing sensor nodes and other devices with pervasive, wireless networks. Our approach focuses on improving social aspects of elderly care besides the conventional care-giving functionalities. Finally, we talk about the importance of preserving privacy of such a system and propose a primitive solution for the inclusion of privacy awareness in the system. Although H2N is basically designed to function as a healthcare aide for the elderly people, with little customization it can be used to accommodate other user groups as well. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin.