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AGE@HOME: Radio-Enabled Environments for Independent Ageing

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Abstract

Ageing populations is a phenomenon over the world. The challenges of daily living for the elderly form the basis of the independent living platform proposed in this article. The AGE@HOME platform is intended to detect unusual activity or inactivity in a home, and is designed to alert caregivers and public health service providers of critical environmental situations in the home (for instance, abnormally high temperature) or unusual behavioural patterns (for instance, the prolonged stillness of a resident). The platform taps into the potential of combining automatic data capture, identification, and sensor technology in order to create a simple and non-intrusive care system. The article presents the decision logic that forms the basis of the system, before describing the software program and graphical user interfaces that were developed based on that logic. A random simulation of the software was run, confirming the decision logic as initially conceived. The simulation also verified that the software could be used in a real-life scenario, in which physical sensors provide data in real-time to the central controller.

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Correspondence to Lara Srivastava.

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Srivastava, L., Zrno, D. AGE@HOME: Radio-Enabled Environments for Independent Ageing. Wireless Pers Commun 51, 761–791 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-009-9774-4

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