The unprecedented rise in the population of older adults and the number of seniors living with and managing chronic conditions are straining our institutional health care systems leading to reduced care quality and unmanageable cost increases. At the same time, an overwhelming majority of older adults express a strong desire to age in place in their communities. Ambient home sensing presents an opportunity to reduce healthcare costs by facilitating older adults’ ability to age-in-place in more familiar, less restrictive, and less expensive environments. Further, ambient home sensing tools have the potential to extend the health care work force and enhance health care quality/outcomes by facilitating remote patient monitoring as well as early intervention and prevention against adverse events – all while catering to older adults’ preference to live at home. Despite their potential, there is limited research at present about the benefits of ambient sensing systems installed in private homes, and older adults’ response to them. This paper describes a pilot ambient home sensing project, HomeSense, actively deployed in the homes of older adults residing in The Villages, Florida.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.