New Domestic Healthcare. Co-designing Assistive Technologies for Autonomous Ageing at Home

Abstract

Ageing is connected with increased chronic psychological and physicaldisabilities, which are today delayed to older ages than in the past. The constantgrowth in number of older people in our society creates a larger demand of goodsand services related to home care, due to the willingness of the elderly to live at homeremaining autonomous as long as possible. Using a Human Centred Design method,this research aims to support ageing in place and to extend independence of olderpeople through appropriate technological strategies for families, reducing both costsand risk factors of caregiving. Quality Function Deployment tool and Co-Designtechnique are the main approaches that have led the design process, including olderpeople in every decision-making step. The final result is an assistive IoT ecosystem,which provides at the same time a customizable healthcare service to the elderly anda home care management system to their caregivers.