Design and Implementation of a Smart Home in a Box to Monitor the Wellbeing of Residents With Dementia in Care Homes

Abstract

There is a global challenge related to the increasing number of People with Dementia (PwD) and the diminishing capacity of governments, health systems, and caregivers to provide the best care for them. Cost-effective technology solutions that enable and ensure a good quality of life for PwD via monitoring and interventions have been investigated comprehensively in the literature. The objective of this study was to investigate the challenges with the design and deployment of a Smart Home In a Box (SHIB) approach to monitoring PwD wellbeing within a care home. This could then support future SHIB implementations to have an adequate and prompt deployment allowing research to focus on the data collection and analysis aspects. An important consideration was that most care homes do not have the appropriate infrastructure for installing and using ambient sensors. The SHIB was evaluated via installation in the rooms of PwD with varying degrees of dementia at Kirk House Care Home in Belfast. Sensors from the SHIB were installed to test their capabilities for detecting Activities of Daily Living (ADLs). The sensors used were: (i) thermal sensors, (ii) contact sensors, (iii) Passive Infrared (PIR) sensors, and (iv) audio level sensors. Data from the sensors were collected, stored, and handled using a ‘SensorCentral’ data platform. The results of this study highlight challenges and opportunities that should be considered when designing and implementing a SHIB approach in a dementia care home. Lessons learned from this investigation are presented in addition to recommendations that could support monitoring the wellbeing of PwD. The main findings of this study are: (i) most care home buildings were not originally designed to appropriately install ambient sensors, and (ii) installation of SHIB sensors should be adapted depending on the specific case of the care home where they will be installed. It was acknowledged that in addition to care homes, the homes of PwD were also not designed for an appropriate integration with ambient sensors. This study provided the community with useful lessons, that will continue to be applied to improve future implementations of the SHIB approach.

Informal Caregiving and Alzheimer’s Disease: The Psychological Effect

“…Telephone, computer, or video supports can help caregivers through these difficult times. Substantial progress has been made recently to aid both formal and informal caregiving [ 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 , 60 ], thus this may be an avenue to contemplate with future research in combination with findings from this study. However, further research is needed on caregivers’ views, with a solutions-based approach that will identify caregivers’ problems and at the same time will provide possible solutions to address these based on the perceived needs of the caregiver.…”

Assessing the cognitive decline of people in the spectrum of AD by monitoring their activities of daily living in an IoT-enabled smart home environment: a cross-sectional pilot study

“…As the study was conducted during the pandemic (2021), solely fully vaccinated (validated vaccination certificates with verified app) participants were recruited. Moreover, after each participant's visit decontamination by experts took place at the SH to ensure the safety of all people involved.…”

“…A plethora of sensors has been used and deployed in the context of Smart Homes (SH) (in the sense of controlled research environments, care homes or participants’ homes where the sensors are being installed) allowing for remote in-home sensing and remote ADL monitoring ( Garcia-Constantino et al, 2021 ; Moyle et al, 2021 ). There are many opportunities for the use of various SH technologies in community-dwelling PwD, ranging from diagnostic assessment to long-term and personalized care management.…”

Smart Home Technology Solutions for Cardiovascular Diseases: A Systematic Review

“…A recent study evaluated diabetes patients' activity, diet, and exercise compliance in SHT settings and observed that SHT settings are essential in providing accessible, low-cost health assistance in an individual's home and providing the best possible quality of life [15]. In contrast, an SHT developed and tested in laboratory settings to monitor the well-being of elderly residents with dementia in care homes was unable to be deployed in real time due to infrastructure deficiencies [16]. On the other hand, designing SHT in consultation with dementia patients, their caregivers, clinicians, and health and social care service providers to satisfy the functional, psychosocial, and environmental needs results in the development of SHT that provide patient-centric interventions and assist in seamlessly transitioning to clinical practice and public health strategy [17].…”