Ubiquitous Computing for Independent Living

1. Ubiquitous Computing for Independent Living Prof. Neil Bergmann School of ITEE, University of Queensland

2. Contents • Motivation • Smart Home • Communities of Care • Ubiquitous Computing

3. Motivation • Western demographic changes • Reduced birthrate • Increased lifespan • Larger proportion of elderly • Chronic diseases correlated strongly with age • More need for healthcare • Smaller workforce to service this need • Need for different healthcare models

4. Health & Technology • ICT has already provided considerable efficiencies in:- • Communications, Logistics • Banking & Finance, Retail • ICT has good penetration into hospital care • Relatively poor penetration into community care

5. Smart Homes • Technology can provide: • Explicit social alarms (alert pendant) • Implicit alarms (falls detection) • Safety and Security (entryphone) • Automation (lights, heating,..) • Education, Brain Gym • Physiological Monitoring • Social Networks • Enhanced Mobility

6. Smart Homes • Lots of available technologies • We have enough gadgets • Lack of standardisation • Too many standards, or not enough? • Some excellent pilot installations • Still lack clear demonstration of benefits • Ad Hoc Design • What is best practice?

7. Communities of Care • For the infirm elderly, there are many involved in their social and care networks: • Resident, spouse • GP, after-hours GP, specialists, hospital • Call Centre • Community nurses • Allied health (OT, dieticians, ...), Pharmacists • Meals on Wheels • Social Coaches • Family, friends

8. Information Flows Carers Resident Carers Carers Carers

9. Electronic Information Flows Carer Apps Distributed Health Record Apps Apps Carer Apps

10. Ubiquitous Computing • Computers Everywhere • the Disappearing Computer • Communications Everywhere • Information everywhere • Access everywhere, everywhen, everyhow • Secure, reliable, dependable, intuitive

11. Electronic Community of Care • Coordinated, Cooperating Information Systems which support the social and medical care of residents dealing with infirmity or illness. • Effectively, a particular application of Business Process Management, should be amenable to many of the same techniques.

12. Defining Flows • Should existing information flows and workflows drive the specification of information systems to support these processes ? – can enshrine existing inefficiencies, add overheads without value. OR • Should new information flows and workflows drive the way carers operate? – a danger that carers actions are driven by software needs, not effective care.

13. Information Architectures for ECoC • A suitable information architecture needs to support a wide range of information flows and workflows, rather than define one flow. • Methodologies needed to define suitable, flexible information flows within such a framework.

14. Some Early Thoughts • Information in distributed databases • Secure messaging between databases and applications • Appropriate access rights based on roles • Specification of workflows for care needs • Specification of effective user-interfaces • Integration of sensors and actuators

15. User-Centred Design • Different residents require different health management plans. • These can be implemented as (flexible) workflows within an ECoC system. • Unrealistic and inefficient to have health professionals designing ICT applications. • Suggests that ICT designers also need to be part of the care team.

16. Conclusions • ECoC have the potential to provide better coordinated, better informed community care. • Smart Homes can be integrated as one component in an ECoC. • Need methodologies to specify individual care plans within an ECoC architecture. • ECoC are not just ICT systems, but require suitably trained ICT professionals as part of the care team.