The OCarePlatform : a context-aware system to support independent living

Background: Currently, healthcare services, such as institutional care facilities, are burdened with an increasing number of elderly people and individuals with chronic illnesses and a decreasing number of competent caregivers. Objectives: To relieve the burden on healthcare services, independent living at home could be facilitated, by offering individuals and their (in)formal caregivers support in their daily care and needs. With the rise of pervasive healthcare, new information technology solutions can assist elderly people ("residents") and their caregivers to allow residents to live independently for as long as possible. Methods: To this end, the OCarePlatform system was designed. This semantic, data-driven and cloud based back-end system facilitates independent living by offering information and knowledge-based services to the resident and his/her (in)formal caregivers. Data and context information are gathered to realize context-aware and personalized services and to support residents in meeting their daily needs. This body of data, originating from heterogeneous data and information sources, is sent to personalized services, where is fused, thus creating an overview of the resident's current situation. Results: The architecture of the OCarePlatform is proposed, which is based on a service-oriented approach, together with its different components and their interactions. The implementation details are presented, together with a running example. A scalability and performance study of the OCarePlatform was performed. The results indicate that the OCarePlatform is able to support a realistic working environment and respond to a trigger in less than 5 seconds. The system is highly dependent on the allocated memory. Conclusion: The data-driven character of the OCarePlatform facilitates easy plug-in of new functionality, enabling the design of personalized, context-aware services. The OCarePlatform leads to better support for elderly people and individuals with chronic illnesses, who live independently. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved

An Evidence-Based Approach To Digital Inclusion for Health

This report is the first deliverable of the ?Digital Inclusion and Social Knowledge Media for Health: Frameworks and Roadmaps? project. It discusses the concept of social and digital exclusion and suggests that a focus on the digital mediation of social processes may provide more purchase for public service providers. This focus leads to the consideration of the way in which digital services might support a range of health-related factors which are both directly and indirectly linked to specific health outcomes. The report discusses some examples in the light of a consideration of the specific (and spatial) health needs and priorities of Solihull Care Trust. The report concludes with suggestions for directions for future research and development

The OCareCloudS project: toward organizing care through trusted cloud services

The increasing elderly population and the shift from acute to chronic illness makes it difficult to care for people in hospitals and rest homes. Moreover, elderly people, if given a choice, want to stay at home as long as possible. In this article, the methodologies to develop a cloud-based semantic system, offering valuable information and knowledge-based services, are presented. The information and services are related to the different personal living hemispheres of the patient, namely the daily care-related needs, the social needs and the daily life assistance. Ontologies are used to facilitate the integration, analysis, aggregation and efficient use of all the available data in the cloud. By using an interdisciplinary research approach, where user researchers, (ontology) engineers, researchers and domain stakeholders are at the forefront, a platform can be developed of great added value for the patients that want to grow old in their own home and for their caregivers

Towards a Smarter organization for a Self-servicing Society

Traditional social organizations such as those for the management of healthcare are the result of designs that matched well with an operational context considerably different from the one we are experiencing today. The new context reveals all the fragility of our societies. In this paper, a platform is introduced by combining social-oriented communities and complex-event processing concepts: SELFSERV. Its aim is to complement the "old recipes" with smarter forms of social organization based on the self-service paradigm and by exploring culture-specific aspects and technological challenges.Comment: Final version of a paper published in the Proceedings of International Conference on Software Development and Technologies for Enhancing Accessibility and Fighting Info-exclusion (DSAI'16), special track on Emergent Technologies for Ambient Assisted Living (ETAAL

Media Takes: On Aging

With the longevity revolution, humankind enters a new and unprecedented stage of development, the impact of which is even greater because of its rapidity. This report/styleguide is an important step in overcoming ageist language and beliefs by providing journalists and others who work in the media with an appropriate body of knowledge, including a lexicon that helps redefine and navigate this new world

Social Deprivation and Digital Exclusion in England

Issues of digital exclusion are now increasingly considered alongside those of material deprivation when formulating interventions in neighbourhood renewal and other local policy interventions in health, policing and education. In this context, this paper develops a cross classification of material deprivation and lack of digital engagement, at a far more spatially disaggregate level than has previously been attempted. This is achieved my matching the well known 2004 Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) with a unique nationwide geodemographic classification of access and use of new information and communications technologies (ICTs), aggregated to the unit postcode scale. This ‘E-Society’ classification makes it possible for the first time to identify small areas that are ‘digitally unengaged’, and our cross classification allows us to focus upon the extent to which the 2004 summary measure of material deprivation in England coincides with such lack of engagement. The results of the cross classification suggest that lack of digital engagement and material deprivation are linked, with high levels of material deprivation generally associated with low levels of engagement with ICTs and vice versa. However, some neighbourhoods are ‘digitally unengaged’ but not materially deprived, and we investigate the extent to which this outcome may be linked to factors such as lack of confidence, skills or motivation. Our analysis suggests that approximately 5.61 million people in England are both materially deprived and digitally unengaged. As with material deprivation, there are distinctive regional and local geographies to digital unengagement that have implications for digital policy implementation

Improving Pathways to Transit for Persons with Disabilities

Persons with disabilities can achieve a greater degree of freedom when they have full access to a variety of transit modes, but this can only be achieved when the pathways to transit – the infrastructure and conditions in the built environment – allow full access to transit stops, stations, and vehicles. Since passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990, many transit agencies and governmental jurisdictions have made significant progress in this area. Policy initiatives, incremental enhancements, modifications, and other measures undertaken by transit agencies and their partners have significantly improved access to transit for persons with disabilities, others who rely on public transportation, and individuals who chose to utilize these services. This research study explores, through case study work, efforts that have been effective in improving pathways to transit. Interviews and site visits were conducted with five transit agencies, along with their partners, that are actively engaged in improving pathways to connect transit consumers – particularly people with disabilities – with transit stations and stops. These agencies are: Broward County Transit (Broward County, FL), Memphis Area Transit Authority (Memphis, TN), NJ TRANSIT (Newark and New Brunswick, NJ), Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon (Portland, OR), and Link Transit (Wenatchee, WA). Promising practices and/or lessons were identified through the case study analysis; these should be considered by any transit agency seeking to create improved access to its services for persons with disabilities