W2T Framework Based U-Pillbox System Towards U-Healthcare for the Elderly

Abstract

Healthcare is a challenging issue for persons with physical disabilities (e.g., the elderly). One significant issue refers to non-adherence of medication regimens in geriatric healthcare, particularly among elderly patients who live alone. To address this problem, thousands of ubiquitous hardware (e.g., smart objects) and software (e.g., u-pillbox, etc.) have been developed. Although partial solutions were given, it is important to have a comprehensive understanding to medication adherence. This requires a framework expected to host healthcare devices, execute related applications, and provide an open platform for accessing and interacting with other healthcare systems (e.g., hospital and pharmacy). This chapter proposes a W2T data cycle based holistic elderly healthcare framework and demonstrates its functionality with a u-pillbox system for the elderly. The u-pillbox system consists of three main processes: data acquisition of the elderly situation and medicine taking state; data analysis and elderly model enhancement; and provision of empathetic services to the elderly, in which cyber-I, human model, data cycle for the spiral quality of model enhancement, knowledge fusion towards wisdom for providing smart services are our critical concepts and techniques. Although this system is designated for geriatric healthcare, it has a potential extension to general health monitoring and care at home.