Title :
Trends in home-based safety and health alert support systems for older people
Author :
Pirapinthan, Maruthalingam ; Moulton, Bruce ; Lal, Sara
Author_Institution :
Univ. of Technol. Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Abstract :
There is a trend towards the development of sensor systems to help older people improve their safety in the home environment. This is due to an increase in the average age of the population, together with a greater focus on providing non-hospital health care services, and greater availability of low-cost components to support such systems. It is expected that smart home care technologies would be potentially useful in monitoring the safety of the elderly in the home environment. The safety of older and disabled people can be continuously monitored without interrupting their daily routine with intelligent devices and modern sensors located in their home environment and on the body. While home care technologies are beneficial for older people, and encourage independence, there are still privacy and safety issue that need to be considered if such systems are to be widely adopted. Further research is required, especially with respect to regarding use cases and the cost implications of home-based systems.
Keywords :
biomedical engineering; body sensor networks; geriatrics; health care; intelligent sensors; personal area networks; safety; body sensor; disabled people; health alert support system; home environment; home-based safety; intelligent devices; non-hospital health care services; older people; sensor system; smart home care technology; Biomedical monitoring; Electrocardiography; Monitoring; Robots; Safety; Senior citizens; Smart homes; Smart homes; ageing; sensors; support technology; wireless systems;
Conference_Titel :
Broadband and Biomedical Communications (IB2Com), 2011 6th International Conference on
Conference_Location :
Melbourne, VIC
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4673-0768-0
DOI :
10.1109/IB2Com.2011.6217921