An Advanced Home ElderCare Service

With the increase of welfare cost all over the developed world, there is a need to resort to new technologies that could help reduce this enormous cost and provide some quality eldercare services. This paper presents a middleware-level solution that integrates monitoring and emergency detection solutions with networking solutions. The proposed system enables efficient integration between a variety of sensors and actuators deployed at home for emergency detection and provides a framework for creating and managing rescue teams willing to assist elders in case of emergency situations. A prototype of the proposed system was designed and implemented. Results were obtained from both computer simulations and a real-network testbed. These results show that the proposed system can help overcome some of the current problems and help reduce the enormous cost of eldercare service

ANGELAH: A Framework for Assisting Elders At Home

The ever growing percentage of elderly people within modern societies poses welfare systems under relevant stress. In fact, partial and progressive loss of motor, sensorial, and/or cognitive skills renders elders unable to live autonomously, eventually leading to their hospitalization. This results in both relevant emotional and economic costs. Ubiquitous computing technologies can offer interesting opportunities for in-house safety and autonomy. However, existing systems partially address in-house safety requirements and typically focus on only elder monitoring and emergency detection. The paper presents ANGELAH, a middleware-level solution integrating both ”elder monitoring and emergency detection” solutions and networking solutions. ANGELAH has two main features: i) it enables efficient integration between a variety of sensors and actuators deployed at home for emergency detection and ii) provides a solid framework for creating and managing rescue teams composed of individuals willing to promptly assist elders in case of emergency situations. A prototype of ANGELAH, designed for a case study for helping elders with vision impairments, is developed and interesting results are obtained from both computer simulations and a real-network testbed

LAURA: LocAlization and Ubiquitous monitoRing of pAtients for health care support

This works illustrates the LAURA system, which performs localization, tracking and monitoring of patients hosted at nursing institutes by exploiting a wireless sensor network based on the IEEE 801.15.4 (Zigbee) standard. We focus on the indoor personal localization module, which leverages a method based on received signal strength measurements, together with a particle filter to perform tracking of moving patients. We discuss the implementation and dimensioning of the localization and tracking system using commercial hardware, and we test the LAURA system in real environment, both with static and moving patients, achieving an average localization error lower than 2 m in 80% of the cases. The data sets containing the real measurements of received signal strengths collected during the experiments are made publicly available to enable reproducible research

Environmental health quality of life of the aged with disability in selected districts in the Upper West region of Ghana

A substantial proportion of the aged population will have to face frailty and dependency. As a result, environmental health care for the aged with disability has become a public health concern. Therefore, the study examined the environmental Health Quality of Life (QOL) of the aged with disability in selected districts in the Upper West Region of Ghana. The study employed a census survey and questionnaires to collect data from 810 aged with disability. Independent-samples t-test and one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) statistical tools were used. The analysis revealed a significant difference [F (807) = 22.318 value, p = 0.000] in environmental health QOL across age of the respondents, such that those aged 60-69 years had the highest mean score and those 80 years and older with lowest mean score. Further, mean scores were higher for those with physical disability than those with visual disability with a significant difference [t (808) = 4.085, p = 0.000] in environmental health QOL between type of disability. The study revealed the important role played by the background characteristics of the aged with disability in influencing their environmental health QOL. The study recommends that family members and governmental agencies continue to assist in the provision of environmental needs of the aged with disability

Aging at work: A review of recent trends and future direction

Demographic data suggest a rapid aging trend in the active workforce. The concept of aging at work comes from the urgent requirement to help the aging workforce of the contemporary industries to maintain productivity while achieving a work and private life balance. While there is plenty of research focusing on the aging population, current research activities on policies covering the concept of aging at work are limited and conceptually different. This paper aims to review publications on aging at work, which could lead to the creation of a framework that targets governmental decision-makers, the non-governmental sector, the private sector, and all of those who are responsible for the formulation of policies on aging at work. In August 2019 we searched for peer-reviewed articles in English that were indexed in PubMed, IEEE Xplore, and Springer and published between 2008 and 2019. The keywords included the following phrases: “successful aging at work”, “active aging at work”, “healthy aging at work”, “productive aging at work”, and “older adults at work”. A total of 47,330 publications were found through database searching, and 25,187 publications were screened. Afterwards, 7756 screened publications were excluded from the further analysis, and a total of 17,431 article abstracts were evaluated for inclusion. Finally, further qualitative analysis included 1375 articles, of which about 24 are discussed in this article. The most prominent works suggest policies that encourage life-long learning, and a workforce that comprises both younger and older workers, as well as gradual retirement.V.T., E.Z., I.C. and P.L. acknowledge the support of Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, North Macedonia. In addition, this manuscript is funded by FCT/MEC through portuguese national funds and when applicable co-funded by FEDER—PT2020 partnership agreement under the project UIDB/EEA/50008/2020 (Este trabalho é financiado pela FCT/MEC através de fundos nacionais e quando aplicável cofinanciado pelo FEDER, no âmbito do Acordo de Parceria PT2020 no âmbito do projeto UIDB/EEA/50008/2020). This manuscript is based upon work from COST Action IC1303-AAPELE-Architectures, Algorithms, and Protocols for Enhanced Living Environments and COST Action CA16226-SHELD-ON-Indoor living space improvement: Smart Habitat for the Elderly, supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology). COST is a funding agency for research and innovation networks. Our actions help connect research initiatives across Europe and enable scientists to grow their ideas by sharing them with their peers. This boosts their research, career and innovation. More information in www.cost.eu. Based on CA16226 project, LTC18035 INTER COST was proposed for national funding support of COST ACTION Framework by MEYS, Czech Republic. This work was also supported in part by the project (2020/2206), Grant Agency of Excellence, University of Hradec Kralove, Faculty of Informatics and Management, Czech Republic

INDOOR LOCATION TRACKING AND ORIENTATION ESTIMATION USING A PARTICLE FILTER, INS, AND RSSI

With the advent of wireless sensor technologies becoming more and more common-place in wearable devices and smartphones, indoor localization is becoming a heavily researched topic. One such application for this topic is in the medical field where wireless sensor devices that are capable of monitoring patient vitals and giving accurate location estimations allow for a less intrusive environment for nursing home patients. This project explores the usage of using received signal strength indication (RSSI) in conjunction with an inertial navigation system (INS) to provide location estimations without the use of GPS in a Particle Filter with a small development microcontroller and base station. The paper goes over the topics used in this thesis and the results

Lanthorn, vol. 40, no. 32, January 9, 2006

Lanthorn is Grand Valley State\u27s student newspaper, published from 1968 to the present

Recognising Activities of Daily Life through the Usage of Everyday Objects around the Home

The integration of RFID sensors into everyday products has become a widespread solution for increasing efficiency in supply chain management. This has also led to a way of being able to monitor everyday activities in the home based on when and how these products are used, which is less intrusive than other monitoring approaches such as visual based systems. Monitoring activities in a home environment can be seen as a good way of analyzing behavior and tracking functional decline among elderly people. This paper describes a hierarchal approach for activity recognition using object usage data generated by everyday products used around the home. The motivation of this work is to allow people with early Alzheimer’s disease to have additional years of independent living before the disease reaches a stage where the person is fully dependable on someone else

I get old, therefore I am? : Multilevel, value-driven perspective on the future of informal care and home care of the elderly in Finland

Megatrend of aging population has significant, structure changing effects in the society. Due to changing age structure, new policies and practices are needed. Importance of the megatrend has been recognized also in one of the Finnish government’s key strategic projects: The “Home care for older people will be developed and informal care enhanced in all age groups” key project focuses on the needs of the aging population. As a part of the key project, public feedback has been collected via Otakantaa.fi webpage. In this thesis, feedback given by 221 respondents was analyzed. This thesis addresses concrete issues in elderly care, examines future orientation of the data and dives below the surface of the discussion. Aim was to study how better consideration of values, worldviews and prevailing myths and metaphors could be of help in creating more legitimate future policies. The overall aim was to illustrate the complex system dynamics between micro-level of citizens and meso-level of public policy making, and bring new dimensions to the discussion concerning social and health care needs of the elderly. Therefore, based on systems thinking, Multilevel perspective (MLP) on transition, citizen involvement in public policy-making and Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) method, a conceptual framework for this study was generated. The results indicate that there is a lot of room for development in informal care and home care of the elderly. Various wishes for future elderly services were found in regards with the needs of the elderly, role of informal caregivers and home care personnel and current health care system in general. From the data, it was also identified that the future of elderly care does not seem too bright: attitudes towards aging can be interpreted to consist of a complex package of fear, uncertainty and despair. More positive futures could be created by taking various concerns into account, both in more concrete level but also in regards with the general attitudinal atmosphere. In addition, prevailing paradoxes were identified as a part of analysis. These include for instance: 1) Dependence on and requirement for the welfare state’s support vs. distrust towards the welfare state; 2) Expectations for the welfare state vs. reality; and 3) Individualism vs. sense of community. The analysis showed that using CLA in the analysis of public data can be of help in finding new perspectives to the issues in public policy making. Also, the integrated framework, “Multilevel, value-driven perspective on socio-political transition”, proved to be of help in illustrating the dynamics of the complex system. All in all, better consideration of values, worldviews and myths and metaphors could be of help in building up a system in which there is less polarization and confrontations. Eventually, in the long-term, value-driven public policy making could lead to a flourishing society in which everyone would be committed to do one’s part for common good