Presentation of the paper "A Healthcare Support System for Assisted Living Facilities: an IoT Solution" at the 40th IEEE Computer Society International Conference on Computers, Software & Applications (COMPSAC 2016) in Atlanta, Georgia, USA on June 10-14, 2016

1. A Healthcare Support System for Assisted
Living Facilities: an IoT Solution
Fulvio Corno, Luigi De Russis, Alberto Monge Roffarello
Politecnico di Torino
Dipartimento di Automatica e Informatica
e-Lite Research Group
http://elite.polito.it
The 40th IEEE Computer Society
International Conference on Computers,
Software & Applications
Atlanta, Georgia, USA - June 10-14, 2016

2. Goal
COMPSAC 2016Healthcare Support System for Assisted Living Facilities2
 Leverage Internet of Things and Wearable Computing in
the domain of Ambient Assisted Living
 Target environment: Assisted Living Facilities

3. Outline
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 Problem statement
 Requirements elicitation
 System functionality and architecture
 Experimental evaluation
 Lessons Learned and Conclusions

4. Assisted Living Facilities
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 Ambient Assisted Living (AAL)
 technologies for enhancing
the life of people with
special needs (elderly, disabled)
 Most proposed solutions target:
 Individuals, living alone, in a smart home
 Doctors and nurses, in an hospital-like setting
 This work analyzes AAL in Assisted Living Facilities (ALF):
 Provide hospitality, welfare benefits, and recovery to a group of
people in mental or physical conditions of dependency
 Daily life assistance -- Safe living environment -- No medical care

5. User-Centered Process Overview
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Requirements
•Target environment
•Target users
•Stakeholders
•Focus Groups
Design
•Functionality
•Architecture
•Technology
Prototype
•Mobile+
Wearable+
Cloud
•Basic functions
•OTS devices
Test
•Walkthrough
•Questionnaires
•Installation in
ALF
•User trials

6. Requirement analysis
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 Target users in the Assisted Living Facility
 Guests
 Persons with motor disabilities
 Persons with cognitive disabilities
 Caregivers
 Educators, Social care assistants
 Nurses, Doctors
 Focus groups with 30+ caregivers
 Identified major requirements
Aced López, S., Corno, F., & De Russis, L. (2015).
Supporting Caregivers in Assisted Living
Facilities for Persons with Disabilities: a
User Study. Universal Access in the
Information Society, 14(1).

7. Main Case Studies
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 Guests alerting caregivers,
in case of need
 Automatic alerting, in case
of guest falls
 Automatic alerting, in case
of epileptic seizures
 Caregiver on duty alerting
caregiver on call

8. System Requirements
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System Ubiquity Assistance delivery confirmation
System Portability (hands-free) Unobtrusiveness for other users
Robustness of the devices Emergency call for caregivers
Smart assistance for guests Reliability
Automatic detection of critical events Internet-based

9. System Architecture
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 Wearable device (smart watch)
for guest
 “Hidden” Mobile device (smart
phone) for guest
 Wearable device (smart watch)
for caregiver
 Mobile device (smart phone
and app) for caregiver
 Internet-based server
 Cloud messaging service

10. Alerting workflow (1/3)
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11. Alerting workflow (2/3)
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12. Alerting workflow (3/3)
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13. Implementation
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 Watch app for guest
 Watch app for caregiver

14. Management Dashboard
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15. Evaluation
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 Functional Test
 1 ALF, 2 caregivers, 6 guests
 Caregivers testing simulated alerts workflow
 Using actual devices
 Final questionnaire
 Operational Test
 1 ALF, 6 caregivers (over 4 shifts), 2 guests involved
 Training + Functional test
 36 hours of continuous operation
 On-line data collection
 Final questionnaire

16. Evaluation results: Functional Test
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17. Evaluation results: Operational Test
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18. Lessons Learned
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 System is easy and quick to learn
 Caregivers appreciated wearables, no need to carry
additional devices
 Smartwatches difficult to operate with motor disabilities
 Voice recognition was suggested for placing calls
 Need longer acquaintance time, to avoid pranks
(especially by persons with cognitive disabilities)
 Re-charge requirements (phone and watch) still an issue
 Not all caregivers convinced of usefulness, need longer
study to assess real usage and user acceptance

19. Conclusions
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 Study on often-neglected target users:
caregivers in ALF
 User-centered design process, continuous
interactions with caregivers from 4 different ALF
 Working system prototype, in-the-field testing
 Completely off-the-shelf technologies
 Design choice, but also signal of maturity
 More comprehensive trials are needed for
assessing real usage data

20. Conclusions
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 Study on often-neglected target users:
caregivers in ALF
 User-centered design process, continuous
interactions with caregivers from 4 different ALF
 Working system prototype, in-the-field testing
 Completely off-the-shelf technologies
 Design choice, but also signal of maturity
 More comprehensive trials are needed for
assessing real usage data
fulvio.corno@polito.it
http://elite.polito.it/Thank you!

21. Contacts
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 Web site:
 http://elite.polito.it
 Publications:
 http://elite.polito.it/index.php/research/publications
 Contact e-mail:
 fulvio.corno@polito.it

22. License
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 This presentation is released undre the licenza Creative
Commons “Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0
Unported” License
 You are free to copy, distribute, transmit the work. You
may not use this work for commercial purposes. You may
not alter, transform, or build upon this work.
 Complete lincense:
 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/