Enabling Person Centric Healthcare Using Ambient Assistive Technology

This book experiences the future of patient-centered healthcare and dives into the latest advancements and transformative technologies that are revolutionizing the well-being of individuals around the globe. The readers can join authors on an engaging journey as the authors explore the captivating realm of ambient assisted living and unlock its immense potential for improving healthcare outcomes. This book goes beyond mere exploration; it invites readers to embark on a voyage of discovery as authors unveil the outcomes of groundbreaking research ideas. With a diverse range of applications, from deep learning in healthcare to cutting-edge models, the authors offer a comprehensive view of the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. Whether you're a healthcare professional, an academic seeking the latest insights, or a researcher delving into the realms of ambient assistive technology, biomedical engineering, or computational intelligence, this book is an invaluable resource. Additionally, postgraduate students pursuing data engineering systems find it to be an essential guide. Each chapter stands independently, providing a comprehensive overview of problem formulation and its tangible outcomes. The readers can immerse themselves in the world of patient-centered healthcare today and become part of the forefront of innovation.

Recent advances in the field of ambient assistive living have addressed the integration of assistive technologies, e-health and personalized healthcare with the aim of enabling improved social experience as well as achieving better health outcomes. This book focuses on ambient assisted living systems and services for healthcare, a multi-disciplinary field encompassing areas such as electrical engineering, computer science, user-centered design and medicine. The book is divided into three parts: personalized healthcare monitoring technologies; ICT for ambient assistive living; and healing environments. The topics covered include sensor systems, wearable technologies, patient monitoring, home monitoring, personalized healthcare, user-centered design, ethical challenges and clinical evaluation. Providing an overview of new developments in e-health and personalized healthcare, the book will be of interest to engineers, designers and others working in the healthcare industry, and to medical practitioners.

Information and communication technologies can provide new paradigms in healthcare provision. In particular, new Pervasive Healthcare technologies can revolutionise the dynamics of healthcare, enabling people to remain at home for longer, at lower costs to health and welfare organisations. This book reveals how pervasive healthcare technologies can be designed in conjunction with users and carers, as well as exploring the application of novel methods and technologies.

Addresses an Emerging Shift in Developing Countries The authors and contributors of Ambient Assisted Living have recognized that the demographic profile is changing in many developing countries and have factored in an inversion of the demographic pyramid. The technology of ambient assisted living (AAL), supports the elderly and disabled in their daily routines to allow for safe and independent living for as long as possible. Dedicated to ambient intelligence—electronic environments that are sensitive and responsive to the presence of people—Ambient Assisted Living highlights the technologies that center on the needs of these special interest groups, such as the elderly or people with disabilities. Beneficial to students, practitioners, and users of ambient assisted living (AAL), this text compiles scattered information on the subject, outlines the most important and significant work in related literature, and covers the latest hardware and software for ergonomic design pertaining to AAL. From inception to implementation, the text assesses what has been produced and researched so far and looks for trends and clues for the future. It reviews literature on AAL published since 2007 and describes the main features and areas of products or systems that interlink and improve new or existing technologies and systems. This text: Provides extensive coverage of the applications, software, and information management for AAL Contains an overview of the concepts related to AAL Includes a comprehensive review of the state of the art on pervasive and mobile health (m-health) applications Describes a set of projects and work with scientific relevance in AAL Introduces a framework focused on the monitoring and assistance of elderly persons living alone Discusses a prospective study on technological systems for people with cognitive disabilities Ambient Assisted Living highlights technologies that adapt to the user rather than the user adapting to the technology. This text proposes technologies that can enable assisted persons to live independently for longer and reduce the need for long-term care.

Information and communication technologies can provide new paradigms in healthcare provision. In particular, new Pervasive Healthcare technologies can revolutionise the dynamics of healthcare, enabling people to remain at home for longer, at lower costs to health and welfare organisations. This book reveals how pervasive healthcare technologies can be designed in conjunction with users and carers, as well as exploring the application of novel methods and technologies.

This book is focused on the Internet of Things (IoT) services and smart environments that can be of assistance to the elderly and individuals living with dementia or some sensory impairment. The book outlines the requirements of the systems that aim to furnish some digital sensory or cognitive assistance to the individuals and their caregivers. Internet of Things and Smart Environments: Assistive Technologies for Disability, Dementia, and Aging covers the important evolutions of the IoT, the sensors, actuators, wireless communication and pervasive computing systems, and other enabling technologies that power up this megatrend infrastructure. The use of the IoT-based systems in improving the conventional assistive technologies and provisions of ambient assisted living are also covered. The book takes an impartial, and yet holistic, view to providing research insights and inspirations for more development works in the areas related to assistive IoT. It will show the potentials of using normally available interactive devices, like smartphones or smart TVs, which can be supplemented with low-cost gadgets or apps to provide assistive capabilities. It aims to accentuate the need for taking a comprehensive and combinatory view of the comprising topics and approaches that are based on the visions and ideas from all stakeholders. The book will examine these points and considerations to conclude with recommendations for future development works and research directions. This book can be of value to a diverse array of audience. The researchers and developers in healthcare and medicine, aged care and disability services, as well as those working in the IoT-related fields, may find many parts of this book useful and stimulating. It can be of great value to postgraduate and research students working in these areas. It can also be adapted for use in upper-level classroom courses relevant to communication and smart technologies, IoT applications, and assistive technologies. Many parts of the book can be of interest to the elderly and individuals living with a disability, as well as their families and caregivers. From an industry perspective, it can be of interest to software, hardware, and particularly app developers working on the IoT applications, smart homes and environments, and assistive technologies for the elderly and people living with disability or dementia.

Worldwide, the population ageing is a reality. The concept of Active Ageing, adopted by the World Health Organization, aims to guarantee quality ageing and appears as a strategy to solve this demographic challenge. The technological solutions might have a key role in the promotion of human functioning and in the mitigation of disabilities, particularly those resulting from the natural ageing process. This perspective is evident in the development of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) solutions. In this context, it is relevant to know about the recent developments in AAL and discuss future trends and challenges in this area. One of the objectives of this book is to do a systematic literature review on AAL, not only considering the technology used, but also the health condition that is intended to improve. For this purpose, we consider the human functioning, in particular the conceptual model of International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). Considering that the ICF conceptual framework is accepted within the healthcare domain, the use of its concepts and terminologies to promote multidisciplinary approaches for AAL solutions development processes can help to overcome difficulties of communication between users, careers and technological developers. AAL solutions must consider in their development the needs of the person that will use AAL solutions. The development must be user-centred and usability questions cannot be forgotten. In addition, the acceptance of the AAL solutions is closely related to the quality of the systems, so it is necessary to appropriately assess these solutions.

This book documents the state of the art in the field of ambient assisted living (AAL), highlighting the impressive potential of novel methodologies and technologies to enhance well-being and promote active ageing. The coverage is wide ranging, with sections on care models and algorithms, enabling technologies and assistive solutions, elderly people monitoring, home rehabilitation, ICT solutions for AAL, living with chronic conditions, robotic assistance for the elderly, sensing technologies for AAL, and smart housing. The book comprises a selection of the best papers presented at the 9th Italian Forum on Ambient Assisted Living (ForitAAL 2018), which was held in Lecce, Italy, in July 2018 and brought together end users, technology teams, and policy makers to develop a consensus on how to improve provision for elderly and impaired people. Readers will find that the expert contributions offer clear insights into the ways in which the most recent exciting advances may be expected to assist in addressing the needs of the elderly and those with chronic conditions.