On the Development of a Resident Monitoring System: Usability, Privacy and Security aspects

Abstract

Worldwide, the elderly have suffered disproportionately from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, both in terms of their prognosis once contracted the disease and in terms of the preventative measures required for this demographic, who are at much higher risk than the rest of the population. In the "new normal", the well-being of older adults (residing either in their own homes or in care homes) will be ideally monitored remotely. These measures would preserve the independence of individuals without compromising on their safety. In this paper we discuss aspects of the design and implementation of a resident monitoring system (RMS) with particular emphasis on overcoming the barriers for adoption among these populations, by addressing the aspects of usability, privacy and security at the core of the development of such a system. We discuss the current challenges of this research and future work on the RMS.

Ethics and acceptance of smart homes for older adults

“…Several studies show that older adults generally have a positive attitude toward the technologies mentioned in Table 2 21,[57][58][59][60][61] but they raise ethical and technical concerns, such as: privacy, 9,20,43,[62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69] autonomy, 20,62,63,68 beneficence, 20,63,68 loss of social contact, 20,63,65,70 ease of use, 9,70 control over technology, 63,65,71 support, 63 training or ability to learn, 9,63,70,72 lack of awareness, 70,73 personalization 74 and reliability. 21,64,68 Table 1.…”

“…In other words, the purpose of these technologies is to assist people of advanced age in their daily lives to achieve a good quality of life (QoL). QoL is characterized by various factors, such as social contacts, activities, health and family relations, 9 and therefore the World Health Organization (WHO) characterizes health-related QoL as physiological, social and mental well-being, 1 as illustrated in Figure 1.…”