A Qualitative Study toward Technologies for Active and Healthy Aging: A Thematic Analysis of Perspectives among Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary End Users

It is expected that, by 2050, people aged over 60 in 65 nations will constitute 30% of the total population. Healthy aging is at the top of the world political agenda as a possible means for hindering the collapse of care systems. How can ICT/sensing technology meet older people’s needs for active and healthy aging? This qualitative study carried out in Italy and Romania in 2020 involved 30 participants: older adults, caregivers, and stakeholders. Based on a user-centered design approach, this study aimed to understand which requirements of ICT/sensing technologies could match people’s needs of active and healthy aging. Findings highlighted that ICT/sensing technology needs to focus on six major themes: (1) learnability, (2) security, (3) independence, empowerment, and coaching values, (4) social isolation, (5) impact of habit, culture, and education variables, and (6) personalized solutions. These themes are consistent with the Active Aging framework and the factors that influence perceived usefulness and potential benefits among older adults. Consequently, this study shows how well-known, but still unresolved, issues affect the field of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to promote active and healthy aging. This suggests that the reinforcement of the public health system, especially considering the pandemic effect, requires a concrete and formidable effort from an interdisciplinary research network

Using IoT Assistive Technologies for Older People Non-Invasive Monitoring and Living Support in Their Homes

Many western societies are confronted with issues in planning and adapting their health policies due to an ageing population living alone. The “NOt Alone at Home—NOAH” project aimed to involve older people in the Agile co-creation of services for a collaborative monitoring and awareness notification for remote caregivers. Our research aim was to create a scalable and modern information system that permitted a non-invasive monitorization of the users for keeping their caregivers up to date. This was done via a cloud IoT (Internet of Things), which collects and processes data from its domotic sensors. The notifications generated by the system, via the three applications we developed (NOAH/NOAH Care/Admin Centre), offer caregivers an easy way of detecting changes in the day-to-day behaviour and activities of their patients, giving them time to intervene in case of abnormal activity. Such an approach would lead to a longer and more independent life for the older people. We evaluated our system by conducting a year-long pilot-study, offering caregivers constant information from the end-users while still living independently. For creating our pilot groups, we used the ABAS (Adaptive Behaviour Assessment System) II, which we then matched with the pre-profiled Behavioral Analysis Models of older people familiar with modern communication devices. Our results showed a low association between daily skills and the sensors we used, in contrast with the results from previous studies done in this field. Another result was efficiently capturing the behaviour changes that took place due to the COVID-19 Lockdown measures