Ambient Assistive Technologies (AAT): socio-technology as a powerful tool for facing the inevitable sociodemographic challenges?

Abstract

Due to the socio-demographic change in most developed western countries, elderly populations have been continuously increasing. Therefore, preventive and assistive systems that allow elderly people to independently live in their own homes as long as possible will become an economical if not ethical necessity. These respective technologies are being developed under the term "Ambient Assistive Technologies" (AAT). The EU-funded AAT-project Ambient Lighting Assistance for an Ageing Population (ALADIN) has established the long-term goal to create an adaptive system capable of improving the residential lighting conditions of single living elderly persons also aiming at supporting the preservation of their independence.Results of an earlier survey revealed that the elderly perceived their current lighting situation as satisfactory, whereas interviewers assessed in-house lighting as too dark and risk-laden. The overall results of ALADIN showed a significant increase in well-being from the baseline final testing with the new adaptive lighting system.Positive results for wellbeing and life quality suggest that the outcome effects may be attributed to the introduction of technology as well as to social contacts arising from participating in the study. The technological guidance of the study supervisors, in particular, may have produced a strong social reactivity effect that was first observed in the famous Hawthorne experiments in the 1930s. As older adults seem to benefit both from meaningful social contacts as well as assistive technologies, the question arises how assistive technology can be socially embedded to be able to maximize positive health effects. Therefore ethical guidelines for development and use of new assistive technologies for handicapped/older persons have to be developed and should be discussed with regard to their applicability in the context of AAT.

Towards Ethical Framework for Personal Care Robots: Review and Reflection

“…In this research Global Positioning System (GPS) technology was used to follow the movements of senior citizens with dementia, whilst considering ethical aspects. (Schu¨lke et al, 2010) found that there is a conflict between perspective of elderlies, caretakers and family members about safety, privacy, and security factors. In this study, family members and caregivers of elderly were found to be far more concerned about safety and security compared to privacy and independency.…”

“…Moreover, this imposes substantial treat to the robot user's privacy since the personal data can be accessed and controlled by other parties. This may also encounter data abuse of the user's personal information (Schu¨lke et al, 2010;Friedwald et al, 2005).…”

“…On the other hand, in an observation study of a household autonomous observation system for elderly, senior citizens declined to be concerned about privacy issues and that they are monitored and observed by the autonomous system (Van Hoof et al, 2011). (Schu¨lke et al, 2010) highly recommended having a balance between privacy, safety, and security. A focus group research has been conducted to identify the balance between elderly's need for safety while maintaining privacy and independency (Landau et al, 2010).…”

eFRIEND

“…Permanently networked technologies has brought with it new surveillance issues for ethical architectural design according to Albrechtslund (2007). A number of authors have accordingly raised the spectre of a "big brother" society where it will be increasingly difficult to be left alone (Schülke et al, 2010;Wright et al, 2010) and the feeling of being under surveillance Langheinrich et al (2004). Similar concerns are raised about safety and security of intelligent environments (Aarts, 2004;Nixon et al, 2004;Van Hoof et al, 2007;Rashidi, 2012), and a trade-off between security/safety and privacy is recognised (Landau et al, 2010;Sharkey and Sharkey, 2012).…”

“…This allows decisions to be made on the collected data . Van Heerde et al (2006) for example, note that it is the both high quality and large quantities of data that can be collected that enable the intelligence of AmI systems, whilst providing privacy challenges, which has the potential for misuse/abuse of this sensitive information (Friedewald, 2005;Schülke et al, 2010). Wright et al (2010) argue that ambient intelligence technology violates most existing privacy-protecting borders.…”