A distributed service-based system for homecare self-management

Abstract

Aging is becoming a critical issue for Europe and many countries around the world. It is imposing significant burden on societies and their national services. Enabling longer home independent living is seen one of the most promising ways to overcome this issue. However, to achieve a number of challenges need to be overcome, especially those related to management of health and disease let alone other social and logistical barriers. One of these challenges is malnutrition, which is considered one of the root causes for the occurrence of other diseases. This paper presents the design of a distributed system that enables homecare in the context of management of self-feeding through balanced nutritional intake. The design employs a service-based system that incorporates a number of services including monitoring of activities, nutritional reasoning for assessing feeding habits, diet recommending for food planning, and marketplace invocation for automating food shopping to meet dietary requirements.