Challenges in Assistive Living Based on Tech Synergies: The Cooperation of a Wheelchair and A Wearable Device

Abstract

AbstractThe direct medical costs for falls only—what patients and insurance companies pay—was $34 billion [Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2013]. The necessity for continuous monitoring and assisting of persons in risk, and the increasing prevalence of chronic conditions among our aging population present great challenges to our healthcare system. These costs are also expected to surpass $54 billion by 2020 (http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/fallcost.htm, in 2007). In addition, the larger healthcare providers offer low quality services. Thus, making a robotic machine “lifting-up” elderly persons or persons with disabilities from a sitting position and transferring them to the bathroom is a very challenging scenario that urgently require innovated solutions. Thus, advanced technological achievements based on robotic nurses and wearable health monitoring devices may represent the up-coming hopeful and desirable solutions. Thus, the challenges here are based on the importance of IT-Engineering solutions to healthcare needs. In addition these challenges offer a paradigm on the already growing personalized/person-centered healthcare and the role of ‘smart homes’ and ‘smart beds’ for independent living and self-management of chronic conditions. While the importance of such care is recognized, not many efforts have been pursued to develop low-cost (and inconspicuous) technologies. Thus, the chapter presents issues for the development of a novel synergistic interactive intelligent framework-model between intelligent wearable health-monitoring devices (WS) and intelligent robotic wheelchairs (IRC) for assisting people (HS) in risk at smart homes, improving safety and quality of life, and reducing healthcare cost. In particular, it will focus on two challenging scenarios (lifting-transferring) reported above providing concepts but at the same time maintaining the generality of this synergistic model. The challenges are related with a new generation of intelligent synergistic models of inexpensive, unobtrusive intelligent wearable sensors, monitoring devices, intelligent robotic assistants, and surveillance methodologies. In addition, the healthcare advanced research technologies and educational training is expected to transform the way physicians and nurses provide care and the way of people at risk will safely stay at their homes. Concurrently, they will offer a ground for new research directions for engineers to contribute in healthcare applications. In addition, commercialization of these devices will certainly transform our healthcare monitoring systems for a large population, and transform the living conditions of people at need.