A Community-Based Activity Center to Promote Social Engagement and Counteract Decline of Elders Living Independently

Abstract

Global ageing of the population is deeply affecting the everyday lives of the frailest, by exposing them to increasing isolation and loneliness that, in turn, can cause or accelerate cognitive decline. The use of digital technologies and, in particular, social networks can be an effective tool to mitigate this phenomenon, by helping older age people to stay connected and be stimulated in the cognitive and physical sphere. In this work, we present a platform called Community-Based Activity Center (CBAC) a central tool developed within the scope of the European project Movecare, an effort to leverage intelligent Ambient-Assisted Living technologies to promote active well-being for the elderly. CBAC conveys cross-domain stimulation in the cognitive, physical, and social scopes by providing a virtual community where different types of activities can be carried out alone or together with caregivers, members of the family, friends, and peers. We followed a modular approach, developing a flexible platform that be integrated with AI-based recommendations and that allows for transparent monitoring. The effectiveness of our platform has been extensively tested in a preliminary usability test and in a pilot experimental campaign that involved 25 selected seniors on a time span of 10 weeks.

Scoping Review of Technological Solutions for Community Dwelling Older Adults and Implications for Instrumental Activities of Daily Living

“…Five studies from the list of remaining studies were in the IADL category of leisure activities. Three of them were using home healthcare technologies [83,127,130] for leisure activities for older adults, and other two studies offered robot technologies [65,84] to older adults. For home healthcare technologies, computerized programs via tablet and remote monitoring were provided to participants to promote active wellbeing for the older adults.…”

“…Studies targeted leisure activities used customized questionnaires for the use of system [83,84], Mobile App Rating Scale (MARS) [127] and open-ended interview [65,130] for the evaluation of technologies for older adults. All studies got meaningful and satisfied results.…”

“…Studies with customized questionnaire for use of system used different scales: three of them [72,83,84] showed results in Likert scale; Caroux et al gave only effectiveness and efficiency scores [82].…”

User feedback and remote supervision for assisted living with mobile robots: A field study in long-term autonomy

“…The MoveCare system is an AAL framework developed around Giraff-X, an autonomous mobile SAR, and is composed of several components installed in the apartments of older adults living independently on their own [26]. Besides the robot, the other components are an Internet of Things (IoT) network, which is used to monitor the user and to provide information to the other components, a Community Based Activity Center (CBAC) [28], and a Virtual Caregiver (VC), a software component acting as platform orchestrator [38].…”

“…Reminder REM The robot reminds the user to perform one of the activities scheduled by the framework for monitoring or stimulation purposes. [24,23,43,28] Spot Question SQ The user is asked to answer questions to monitor their cognitive state.…”