An Adaptable and Flexible Framework for Assistive Living of Cognitively Impaired People

Abstract

On account of chronic neurocognitive disorders, many people progressively lose their autonomy and become more dependent on others, finally reaching the stage when they need round-the-clock care from caregivers. Over time, as patients' needs increase with the evolution of their diseases, caregivers experience increasing levels of stress and burden. Therefore, an assistive solution that is able to adapt to the changing needs of the end-users is needed. This need was considered as a major requirement that emerged from our field work and deployment experience in Singapore. In this paper, we focus on the technical aspects of our deployment, where we were interested in solving the technical requirement of adaptability and extendibility of the framework that has emerged from our predeployment analysis and discussions with professional caregivers. We expose our approach for dynamic integration of assistive services with their related sensing technologies and interaction devices and provide the technical results of the deployment of this solution. We also provide guidelines for real-world deployment of assistive solutions.