In Haigh’s and Yanco’s paper, the institutionalization of the elderly is discussed along with the technological support for this vulnerable community. One of the purposed solutions to taking care of the elderly would be “Smart Home Technologies” which would be systems with sensors and actuators that monitor the occupants, communicate with each other, and intelligently support the occupants in their daily activities.

One of the components that I see as very necessary for the service industry of the elderly is monitoring. There needs to be methods developed that can monitor the patient at home. This is important because if a patient can be monitored at home, than they feel that they still maintain their independence and dignity. Technologies that could be developed for the elderly could be as simple as sensors built into a toilet, that can analyze the information passed through some filters and then sends the information directly to the patient’s doctor. Numerous companies have developed small wearable sensors that measure vital signs, detect falls and provide location tracking, as well as a ‘panic’ button feature.

Another area that can help in the care of the elderly would be the assistive robots, ones that have been built to assist people with personal care, to provide vocational assistance, to retrieve items and to provide safe travel. There can also be robotic arms that can help people eat, assist with personal hygiene, fetch items in a home or office environment, push elevator buttons and open doorknobs. Home monitoring and assistive robots would significantly help the elderly in the home but we need to also address the patient’s mobility for when traveling outside the home.

Research in the field of robotic wheelchairs seeks to address these issues with elderly mobility. In the research of the field, there seems to be an understanding that the person supervises the robot in automatic mode of the chair, overriding robotic commands that are unwanted, and the robot supervises the person in assisted manual mode, overriding commands that put the user in danger. This is the best combination for a design which includes user freedom of mobility while at the same time providing a series of redundancy checks so that the user does not hurt themselves.

The majority of the systems that will emerge onto the marketplace for the elderly will provide the following services: reminding people to take their medicine, monitor the health and safety of people who live alone, and help them move safely through the world. This generation will not have grown up in the information age of computers and therefore these solutions are going to have to have intuitive interfaces and social interactions built into them. As from previous papers, it will be important to add human recorded speech with a motivational tone so that the patients are more accepting of this technology in their home. It is important that this technology be used to help aid the patients to live a healthy life.

Reference:

  1. Haigh, Karen Zita & Yanco, Holly.  “Automation as Caregiver: A Survey Of Issues and Technologies.” <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~khaigh/ILSAEXTERNALWEBSITE/content/publications/AAAIWS02-HaighYanco.pdf>