Clinically-validated technologies for assisted living

Abstract

One of the most important lifestyle risk factors for many chronic conditions in the older age, low physical activity has shown to have significant impact on the sustainability of national welfare in many developed countries. Technology-based assisted living solutions can effectively be used to enable older adults to optimise their health-related quality of life, as well as to promote an active and healthy longevity. This paper describes vINCI—an interdisciplinary research project to actively support assisted living for older adults via state-of-the-art assistive technologies—which seamlessly deploys an ambient intelligence environment to integrate wearable devices, networking, software, and personalised services. It entails clinical validation and feedback at home and residential care facilities via a cloud microservices platform. Underpinned by blockchain technologies, multiple wearable devices, apps, and cameras securely capture the anonymised facets of different life events, whilst machine learning models create individualised user profiles to analyse any decrease in the perceived health-related quality of life typically associated with old age. Two controlled pilots are being conducted with 80 participants at older adult facilities in Romania and Cyprus. By incorporating clinical validation and feedback from specialised practitioners, the vINCI technologies enable older adults not only to self-evaluate their physical activity level, but also to change their behaviours and lifestyle in the long-term.

Use of Blockchain Technology in the Domain of Physical Exercise, Physical Activity, Sport, and Active Ageing: A Systematic Review

“…Finally, 17 articles were selected [51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67], and analyzed in depth, focusing mainly on extracting information on: (1) scope; (2) service proposal; (3) Technology readiness level (TRL); (4) information stored; and (5) use of BC properties.…”

“…Regarding the contribution of the BC to store data (one the main features of BC), two options were identified: "Actual data", i.e., information is directly stored on the BC as it is gathered; and "Pointers and hash of actual data", i.e., information is stored elsewhere, and BC is used to ensure the invariability of information. Fourteen (82.4%) of the selected studies were included in the first case [51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][63][64][65][66][67], and the remaining three (17.7%) fit on the second option [60][61][62]. This decision is highly related to what extent advanced properties of BC are deployed in each particular case.…”

“…In the frame of active ageing, [65] proposed an application to promote active ageing and assess the level of physical activity practice and quality of life. BC was used to provide privacy, control, and ownership over users' data; and to support dynamic source reputation and consistent quality of service in complex sensor networks.…”

Analyzing technology acceptance and perception of privacy in ambient assisted living for using sensor-based technologies

“…Besides general applications that allow monitoring of physical activities, daily habits [ 4 ], vital parameters [ 5 ], or the detection of emergencies (e.g., [ 6 ]), older and/or frail persons can also use age-specific or illness-specialized functions. For instance, sensor-based technologies enable identifying changes in behavior, movement and sleeping patterns, or walking speed [ 7 ]; they also provide potential indicators for the recognition of diseases, such as dementia or Parkinson’s disease (e.g., [ 8 , 9 ]). Hence, analyses of such data enable an early identification of deviations from the normal behavior, health changes, or the detection of possible abnormalities in bodily functions as well as provide security for the users and their important others in the long run.…”

Cross-Domain Classification of Physical Activity Intensity: An EDA-Based Approach Validated by Wrist-Measured Acceleration and Physiological Data

“…As an example, the rehabilitation monitoring. Although a healthcare operator is needed while performing the rehabilitation exercises, other activities like the so-called exergames, that can be remotely assessed, may promote the PA [5] and improve the perceived quality of life [6]. Moreover, other applications can employ PA coaching, in both hospital [7] and home-based interventions [8,9].…”