Using context-aware environment for elderly abuse prevention

Abstract

Numerous national, international and private institutions indicate that in the field of elderly care there is an important, growing and unsolved problem of elderly abuse – also in certified nursing homes. Intelligent environments and contextual processing can be used as a set of tools for elderly abuse prevention and detection, to decrease possibility of a set of abusive behaviors such as neglect and psychological abuse. Thanks to the context of care giving facilities, intelligent sensors can act not only as a help for caregivers to monitor the patient, but can also provide a method to monitor caregivers work in private homes as well as in long term nursing and residential care facilities. The aim of this text is to present which elements of context-aware intelligent environments such as high-level contextual analysis of data, continuous monitoring and placement of main data processing outside of the care giving area are needed to build systems that can help to prevent elderly abuse. Text describes also how low-level contextual processing can enhance functionality of such systems by extending sensors battery life as well as decreasing usage of radio channels.