Use of nonintrusive sensor-based information and communication technology for real-world evidence for clinical trials in dementia

Cognitive function is an important end point of treatments in dementia clinical trials. Measuring cognitive function by standardized tests, however, is biased toward highly constrained environments (such as hospitals) in selected samples. Patient-powered real-world evidence using information and communication technology devices, including environmental and wearable sensors, may help to overcome these limitations. This position paper describes current and novel information and communication technology devices and algorithms to monitor behavior and function in people with prodromal and manifest stages of dementia continuously, and discusses clinical, technological, ethical, regulatory, and user-centered requirements for collecting real-world evidence in future randomized controlled trials. Challenges of data safety, quality, and privacy and regulatory requirements need to be addressed by future smart sensor technologies. When these requirements are satisfied, these technologies will provide access to truly user relevant outcomes and broader cohorts of participants than currently sampled in clinical trials

Conversational affective social robots for ageing and dementia support

Socially assistive robots (SAR) hold significant potential to assist older adults and people with dementia in human engagement and clinical contexts by supporting mental health and independence at home. While SAR research has recently experienced prolific growth, long-term trust, clinical translation and patient benefit remain immature. Affective human-robot interactions are unresolved and the deployment of robots with conversational abilities is fundamental for robustness and humanrobot engagement. In this paper, we review the state of the art within the past two decades, design trends, and current applications of conversational affective SAR for ageing and dementia support. A horizon scanning of AI voice technology for healthcare, including ubiquitous smart speakers, is further introduced to address current gaps inhibiting home use. We discuss the role of user-centred approaches in the design of voice systems, including the capacity to handle communication breakdowns for effective use by target populations. We summarise the state of development in interactions using speech and natural language processing, which forms a baseline for longitudinal health monitoring and cognitive assessment. Drawing from this foundation, we identify open challenges and propose future directions to advance conversational affective social robots for: 1) user engagement, 2) deployment in real-world settings, and 3) clinical translation

Acceptance of ambient assisted living (AAL) technologies among older Australians : a review of barriers in user experience

One of the great challenges facing Australian society is that of an ageing population. Amongst the issues involved in this drastic demographic change, the most significant aspect is the demand for older Australians to live independently at home. The development of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) technologies aims to address this issue. The advancement of AAL applications have been done to support the users with their daily-life activities and health concerns by providing increased mobility, security, safety in emergencies, health-monitoring, improved lifestyle, and fall-detection through the use of sensors. However, the optimum uptake of these technologies among the end-users (the elderly Australians) still remains a big concern. Thus, there is an elevated need to understand the needs and preferences of the seniors in order to improve the acceptance of AAL applications. The aim of this study is to investigate the barriers and perceptions in the use of AAL applications amongst older Australians. Focus groups and quantitative surveys have been conducted to provide a detailed analysis of these impediments. The results show that there are different factors that restrict the use of these technologies along with the fact that elderly people have certain preferences when using them. An understanding of these factors has been gained and suggestions have been made to increase the acceptance of AAL devices. This work gives useful insights towards the design of AAL solutions according to user needs

A review of activity trackers for senior citizens: research perspectives, commercial landscape and the role of the insurance industry

The objective assessment of physical activity levels through wearable inertial-based motion detectors for the automatic, continuous and long-term monitoring of people in free-living environments is a well-known research area in the literature. However, their application to older adults can present particular constraints. This paper reviews the adoption of wearable devices in senior citizens by describing various researches for monitoring physical activity indicators, such as energy expenditure, posture transitions, activity classification, fall detection and prediction, gait and balance analysis, also by adopting consumer-grade fitness trackers with the associated limitations regarding acceptability. This review also describes and compares existing commercial products encompassing activity trackers tailored for older adults, thus providing a comprehensive outlook of the status of commercially available motion tracking systems. Finally, the impact of wearable devices on life and health insurance companies, with a description of the potential benefits for the industry and the wearables market, was analyzed as an example of the potential emerging market drivers for such technology in the future

SHELDON Smart habitat for the elderly.

An insightful document concerning active and assisted living under different perspectives: Furniture and habitat, ICT solutions and Healthcare

Supporting active and healthy aging with advanced robotics integrated in smart environment

The technological advances in the robotic and ICT fields represent an effective solution to address specific societal problems to support ageing and independent life. One of the key factors for these technologies is the integration of service robotics for optimising social services and improving quality of life of the elderly population. This chapter aims to underline the barriers of the state of the art, furthermore the authors present their concrete experiences to overcome these barriers gained at the RoboTown Living Lab of Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna within past and current projects. They analyse and discuss the results in order to give recommendations based on their experiences. Furthermore, this work highlights the trend of development from stand-alone solutions to cloud computing architecture, describing the future research directions

Active and assisted living ecosystem for the elderly

A novel ecosystem to promote the physical, emotional and psychic health and well-being of the elderly is presented. Our proposal was designed to add several services developed to meet the needs of the senior population, namely services to improve social inclusion and increase contribution to society. Moreover, the solution monitors the vital signs of elderly individuals, as well as environmental parameters and behavior patterns, in order to seek eminent danger situations and predict potential hazardous issues, acting in accordance with the various alert levels specified for each individual. The platform was tested by seniors in a real scenario. The experimental results demonstrated that the proposed ecosystem was well accepted and is easy to use by seniors

CSR practices in a Telecomm Company: Information and communication technologies (ICTs) for elderly healthcare management in Portugal

The phenomenon of population aging is resulting in a global demographic change, a consequence of an unbalance relationship between life expectancy increase and low birth rates, where the United Nation Report positions Portugal as the 4th oldest country in the world by 2050. Living longer does not necessarily mean living better. The Portuguese Public Healthcare system is facing sustainability challenges to provide the necessary assistance to an increasingly older population, with unsustainable hospitalizations costs related to chronic uncommunicable diseases. Domiciliary health assistance is a viable solution for this, if an efficient health monitoring assistance is provided, hospitalizations would be prevented. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) applied in the healthcare sector as telemedicine can have an important role not only improving healthcare assistance but also allowing new forms of information sharing and communication through distance, reducing elderly isolation. This project was developed in partnership with Altice Portugal, as an in-company project, with the objective to provide improvement recommendations for the ICT solution that company is developing for elderly domiciliary healthcare management, that includes remote monitoring of vital signs. For that, a conceptual framework was developed in order to schematize the relationship between the variables that influence Elderly Use and Acceptance of Health ICTs, using a face-to-face questionnaire tool to a group of 142 participants. This research permits to understand the importance of Healthcare ICTs, identifying the existing innovations and future trends.O fenómeno do envelhecimento da população está a resultar numa mudança demográfica global, resultado de relação desequílibrada entre o aumento da esperança média de vida e baixa natalidade, onde o relatório das Nações Unidas positionou Portugal como o quarto país do mundo mais envelhecimento em 2050. Viver mais anos não significa necessariamente viver melhor. O Sistema de Nacional de Saúde Português (SNS) apresenta alguns desafios de forma a proporcionar a devida assistência a uma população cada vez mais envelhecida, registando custos de hospitalização insustentáveis associados a doenças crónicas relacionadas com o envelhecimento. Muitos destes casos de hospitalização podem ser prevenidos através de uma monitorização eficaz da saúde, sendo a assistência ao domicilio umas solução viável. A aplicação de tecnologias de informação e comunicação (TICs) no sector da saúde, como por exemplo a telemedicina, podem ter um papel importante, não apenas melhorando a assistência de saúde, bem como permitindo novas formas de partilha de informação e comunicação à distância, reduzindo o isolamento dos idosos. Este projecto foi desenvolvido em parceria com a Altice Portugal com o objectivo de dar recomedações de melhoria para a solução TIC que a empresa se encontra a desenvolver para melhorar o apoio domiciliário a idosos, incluindo o controlo remoto dos sinais vitais. Com esse intuito, um modelo conceptual foi desenvolvido de forma a esquematizar a relação entre as variáveis que podem influenciar o Uso e Aceitação das TICs na saúde por parte dos idosos, através de questionário presencial a um grupo de 142 participantes

State of the art on ethical, legal, and social issues linked to audio- and video-based AAL solutions - Uploaded on December 29, 2021

Ambient assisted living (AAL) technologies are increasingly presented and sold as essential smart additions to daily life and home environments that will radically transform the healthcare and wellness markets of the future. An ethical approach and a thorough understanding of all ethics in surveillance/monitoring architectures are therefore pressing. AAL poses many ethical challenges raising questions that will affect immediate acceptance and long-term usage. Furthermore, ethical issues emerge from social inequalities and their potential exacerbation by AAL, accentuating the existing access gap between high-income countries (HIC) and low and middle-income countries (LMIC). Legal aspects mainly refer to the adherence to existing legal frameworks and cover issues related to product safety, data protection, cybersecurity, intellectual property, and access to data by public, private, and government bodies. Successful privacy-friendly AAL applications are needed, as the pressure to bring Internet of Things (IoT) devices and ones equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) quickly to market cannot overlook the fact that the environments in which AAL will operate are mostly private (e.g., the home). The social issues focus on the impact of AAL technologies before and after their adoption. Future AAL technologies need to consider all aspects of equality such as gender, race, age and social disadvantages and avoid increasing loneliness and isolation among, e.g. older and frail people. Finally, the current power asymmetries between the target and general populations should not be underestimated nor should the discrepant needs and motivations of the target group and those developing and deploying AAL systems. Whilst AAL technologies provide promising solutions for the health and social care challenges, they are not exempt from ethical, legal and social issues (ELSI). A set of ELSI guidelines is needed to integrate these factors at the research and development stage