2002

A telecare infrastructure for private homes

A Telecare Infrastructure for Private Homes

Gunnar Hartvigsen

Abstract

Senior citizen's preference for home care and cost of institutionalization of elderly requires a communication infrastructure for telecare in private homes. The home care service should cover the needs for help in daily life, nursing, caring and medical treatment.

In the GRO Comfort Zone for Elderly ("The Good Room") the goal is to create a complete service package for senior citizens in their own homes. The technological problems include: (1) guaranteed data deliverance (fault tolerance). All alarm signals must be delivered at the home-based caring service central responsible for the area where the alarm was activated, (2) Security and privacy. The system shall protect confidential patient data from any form of abuse.

The services we will offer include among others:

• Monitoring equipment for personal safety ("Automatic safety alarms") • Medical monitoring equipment (care/telecare) • Mobile and wireless communication • Telecommunication service for senior citizens (symbol based, videophone, videoconferences) • "Automatic" medication ("Intelligent pill boxes") • Electronic patient record • Contact with general practitioner (G.P.) and health personell

At Oatfield Estates, a managed-care facility just outside Portland, Oregon (US), we find several of theses services in place. Several sensors monitors the health status of the residents:

"With a few more taps on the screen the caregiver can also ascertain what time Taylor tucks in for the evening, exactly how much he weighs lying in bed (a load cell sits under each bedpost), and whether he's resting peacefully or twisting and turning. She can take his temperature by means of infrared, keep track of how often he rolls in and out of his bedroom, and create graphs documenting changes in his patterns of movement and in his heart rate and blood pressure. And if Taylor, a former steel-company repairman who is still sharp-witted at the age of ninety-one, should ever develop Alzheimer's, the Oatfield staff need not worry that he'll absentmindedly burn himself on the stove down the hall: the infrared sensors would recognize that he had entered the kitchen, and the burners would lose power at once." (Donahue, 2001)

Since Oatfield Estates is a managed-care facility, with health personnel nearby, they do not provide videoconferencing and teleconsultancy/telecare through wide-area networks, as will be supported through the GRO infrastructure. Having medical equipments at home also requires a secure and fault-tolerant communication infrastructure. In the GRO project, we will provide necessary knowledge to support the transformation of care from institutions to private homes.

In this paper, we will present a possible infrastructure for private homes for the integration of the above-mentioned services. The architecture is currently being designed at the University of Tromsø and the Norwegian Centre for Telemedicine.

References

Donahue, B. (2001). Byte, Byte, Against the Dying of the Light: A new senior-care facility e-monitors every move. The Atlantic Monthly, May 2001

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