An ambient assisted living system for dementia patients

Abstract

Dementia is a major health and social care challenge of today and the near future as a result of increasedhuman lifespan. Currently, there is no therapeutic solution for dementia, but a solution for managing the wanderingbehavior of dementia patients can be provided by an ambient assisted living system. In this paper, the design andimplementation of iCarus, which is an intelligent ambient assisted living system for dealing with wandering behaviorin early stages of dementia, is described. The aim of iCarus is to provide independent living for elderly people anda cost-effective way of monitoring them. iCarus is a zone-based system that forms a safety net. When a wanderingepisode occurs, rule-based context reasoning is employed to determine the actions that are to be executed. These actionsinclude warning the patient, navigating the patient to his home, sending notifications to the caregiver(s), and initiatinga real-time tracking session for the caregiver and the emergency service. Also, caregivers are able to construct their ownrules and extend the functionality of the system according to their own needs. Constructing new rules is done by aninnovative user interface. As a case study, iCarus is described and evaluated with a scenario. In order to evaluate theusability of iCarus, a questionnaire was administered after the users tried the system. The results were then statisticallyanalyzed and reported.