Designing and Evaluating Technology for the Dependent Elderly in Their Homes

Abstract

The ageing population and the increasing longevity of individuals is a challenging reality for healthcaretoday. Longevity often leads to increased dependence and the need for continued care, whichis often left to informal caregivers given the inability of the elderly care network to provide. The informal care provided to the dependent elderly occurs either at the caregiver’s or the elderly person’s home. Technology application in healthcare has been attracting the attention of engineers for a long time, especially in providing support for health recovery and maintaining therapy practices. Due to major advances in technology, particularly in movement capture optic systems and information extraction through digital image analysis, support systems are being created to monitorhow therapeutic plans are carried out, as well as to evaluate people’s physical recovery or to assist healthcare professionals and informal caregiver to provide care for dependent elders. This paper reports on the accomplishments of a project with the general objective of using information and communication technologies to develop a prototype for a system focused on monitoring and assisting the execution of a therapeutic plan integrating physical mobilization and medication.