Case Study: University of Illinois- Assisted Living Research

Assisted Living
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have been designing, implementing, and evaluating with test hypothesis an assisted-living supportive software architecture that allows technologies, software components, and wireless devices to work together, dependable, and secure and enable elderly people to regain their capability of living independently. The experiment architecture is called I-Living and has been built to meet several requirements highlighted in the ’blue-box’ above.

RFID and Ubisense technology is used to help elderly people to interact, and make sense, with the environment. Tests will be carried out as well as user group assessments for clear testable hypothesis.
 
Research

The increase of population of elderly people is a social and economic challenge for many countries. According to MIT’s magazine Technology Review, August 2003, ‘’In the United States alone, the number of people over the ages of 65 is expected to hit 70 million by 2030, doubling from 35 million in 200 million, and similar increases are expected worldwide’. The cost of senior care is an area for concern and is recently being reduced by technological means. Because the deteriorating capabilities to sense and interact with the environment, elderly people often live with significantly degraded life quality. This is where I-Living aim to help improve such difficulties.

With the use of Ubisense tags and sensors and other embedded devices such as actuators and Bluetooth-enabled medical devices, elder people can be more self sufficient and independent.

There is an Assisted Living Service Provider (ALSP) which provides web-based interfaces to allow caregivers, healthcare providers and medical experts, to monitor the environment, retrieve/analyse data, and issue feed back. I-Living’s goal is to provide applications to its users which are explained in the ‘green-box’. 
 
I-Living Applications

• Activity Reminder - Wireless enabled devices (e.g., TV’s mobile phones, active tags) send reminder messages when it is time for the elderly person to take his/her medication or any other infor-mation.

• Vital Sign Measurement - The patient can transmit his/her vital signs (such as glucose level, blood pressure etc.) via Bluetooth enabled devices and then to the ALSP server. Should the readings suggest any abnormal health situation, medical instruc-tions will be given to the patient.

• Personal Belonging Localisation - Personal belongings such as eyeglasses, hearing aids etc, are attached with a Ubisense tag. If the person cannot find his/her belonging, with simple vocal command, Ubisense sensors will locate the object.

• Personal Behaviour Profiling - The assisted living environment can profile the movement of an elderly person and detect early warning signs for depression and/or other chronic diseases such as Parkinson's disease.

• Emergency Detection - In case of the need for an emergency (e.g. person has been immobile for a long time), communication channels can be established to notify the relevant care taker and facilitate transmission of electrocardiogram (EKG) in Real-time.