More Technologies to Age in Place–And Stay Safe at Home

The Wall Street Journal ran a story on June 2, 2014 on New Technologies to Help Seniors Age in Place.   The article explains how technology can be used to keep elders safe at home, as well as to allow them to age in place.  What I think is also important in this article is its exploration of the privacy issues and the willingness of the elder to use the technology.

[R]esearchers also must factor in whether seniors will be able to or willing to use the devices. Current methods include wearable alarms, which usually must be activated by the person after an injury, and optical devices, such as videocameras, that can be intrusive…The technology “has to fit the cultural ethics of the aging population,” says Cathy Bodine,  a professor of bioengineering at the University of Colorado Denver. “We’re not always taking that into consideration.”

Discussing the frequency and impact of falls on elders, the article discusses the use of technologies to get help to the elder ASAP, as well as for fall prevention.

Some researchers are studying how to adapt radar technology, which has been used for years to catch highway speeders and in weather forecasting, to applications for assisted living. Others are testing the 3-D sensors used in gaming systems like the Xbox to develop nonintrusive alert systems…. The goal with the elderly is to detect a fall without disturbing them unless they have just fallen. “The whole idea is you cannot have visual access to inside,” says Moeness Amin, director of the Center for Advanced Communications at Villanova University.

Of course there are challenges yet to be resolved, such as identifying when the person is just sitting or whether that was Fido or Fluffy jumping down to lay on the floor. “To do that, scientists need to be able to program the system to distinguish between different actions. A first step is to model what a fall looks like. Simply gathering accurate information can be difficult, since researchers can’t use real elderly people. Instead, they teach young, healthy people to walk and fall like seniors.”

 The article also discusses the work being done at the Center for Eldercare and Rehabilitation Technology at the University of Missouri (featured in an earlier blog) and their work using sensors, radar and motion sensors with some of the information used to calculate the elder’s  risk of falling.

I think there are two very important take-aways that can be useful in our classes, the first being the useability of the technology, but the second, and most important, is the issue of consent and privacy. It may not be big brother, but someone could be watching!