IoT-based system to help care for dependent elderly

Abstract

The aging of the population in most developed countries has increased the need of proposing and adopting systems to monitor the behaviour of elder people with cognitive impairment. Home monitoring is particularly important for caregivers and relatives, who are in charge of these persons in potentially risky environments (e.g., the kitchen, the bathroom, the stairs, go out alone to the street, etc.), while they perform their household activities. On the other hand, the paradigm of Internet of Things (IoT) allows the interconnection of everyday objects to implement sophisticate, yet simple-to-use, computer systems. In this paper, we analyse the existing IoT-based proposals to monitor elder people at home. Moreover, we propose a generic design of an IoT-based home monitoring system that allows caregivers, relatives and/or emergency services to be notified of potentially risky demeanours. Finally, some scenarios or situations are presented in order to better understand the proposal, and to validate its design to cover some common use cases.