Designing Smart Home Technology for Fall Prevention in Older People
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This study focuses on designing smart home technology to prevent falls among older adults, emphasizing the importance of user-centered interfaces. A usability evaluation with five seniors showed positive experiences with an interactive touch screen panel that included features such as exercise guidance, fall detection, and self-assessment tools. The findings highlight the necessity for tailored smart home solutions that support independent living and enhance fall management for elderly individuals.
Designing Smart Home Technology for Fall Prevention in Older People
- 1. Designing Smart Home Technology for Fall Prevention in Older People Ather Nawaz1 , Jorunn L. Helbostad1 , Nina Skjæret1 , Beatrix Vereijken1 , Alan Bourke2 , Yngve Dahl3 , Sabato Mellone4 1 Department of Neuroscience, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway 2 Laboratory of Movement Analysis and Measurement, EPFL, Switzerland 3 SINTEF ICT, Norway 4 Department of Electronics, Computer Science and Systems, University of Bologna, Italy Abstract Falls in older people constitute one of the major challenges in healthcare. It is important to design technologies that can help prevent falls and improve falls management. This study assessed usability of paper and interactive prototypes of a smart home touch screen panel through five scenarios related to fall risk, fall assessment and exercise guidance. A usability evaluation with five senior citizens with an average age 77+6 years (range from 72-87 years) showed that older people had positive experiences when using the touch screen interface. The study demonstrated the need for user-centred interfaces for older people in the context of falls prevention. Usability Evaluation of Smarthome interfaceScenarios for Designing User Interface Discussion and conclusion The study implemented five scenarios related to fall risk, fall assessment and exercise guidance to design smart home touch interface with a particular focus on fall detection and activity monitoring. Somewhat positive experience of the seniors suggests that smart home technologies should be designed evaluated to fulfill the particular needs of seniors. This study underlines the importance and need to design smart home technologies for independent living in general, and for preventing and improving management of falls and fall-related activities for older people. Scenarios Deployed Solution 1) Exercises Through the smartphone/ touch screen interface, the user can select to view video exercises for strength and balance tailored to older adult users 2) Exergames Instructions are given to the user on how to use the exergame. Once finished the user’s performance indicators are saved by the system and used to select the appropriate level for subsequent use. 3) Walking The user can assess the weather forecast via smartphone/smart house interface to see whether the weather forecast is suitable for an outdoor walk. The user then selects the outdoor walk button and commences the outdoor walk with the smartphone attached; they select to finish the outdoor walk upon return. 4) Fall detection If a specific movement signature is measured by the embedded inertial sensors in the phone attached to the user that resembles a fall signature, a message is sent to the smarthome system to raise a fall alarm. The interface then prompts the user to indicate whether they have fallen or not. If no response is given, it is assumed that an actual fall has occurred and the alarm will be sent to an alarm central. 5) Self-test The user’s gait speed is measured through a combination of pressing buttons on the wall mounted touch screens and buttons located around the residence. The time taken to activate the combination of buttons in combination with the distances between them is used to estimate gait speed. Figure 1. interactive prototype of the user interface on a 10 inch smart home screen Validation studies in FARSEEING architecture Figure 1. The circle shows different validation studies In FARSEEING architecture FARSEEING is a collaborative European Commission funded research project with 10 partners distributed in 5 EU countries. It aims to provide a thematic network focusing on the issue of promoting healthy, independent living for older adults. Contact: Ather Nawaz Ather.Nawaz@ntnu.no Table 1. System usability of smart home touch interface.