Chapter 8 - Internet of Things technologies for elderly health-care applications

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the trend in the next-generation technologies, which interconnects the smart devices in today’s Internet structure with more associated benefits. The major advantage of the system includes the connectivity of these smart devices with the services and system that exceed the machine-to-machine structure. IoT plays a major role in building smart pervasive blueprints. A variety of application domains have the usage of IoT, mainly health care. The IoT revolution is reframing modern health care with assuring technological, social, and economic prospects. The count of elderly people who stay alone is increasing exponentially. Advancements in terms of monitoring them remotely are the need of the time, and IoT growth has leveraged the same. Elderly persons face a lot of challenges in conducting their day-to-day life, the challenges range from memory loss, susceptibility to diseases, and impairments making them live in a survival mode. IoT assistance can be deployed for elderly monitoring with the aid of smartphones, vital signal sign monitors, smart wearables, audio–video sensors, smart devices, and smart TV. IoT techniques combined with Big Data and Cloud can be used effectively to give numerous solutions to the problem of remote elder monitoring. There are several manual aids that already exist, which are either slow or inefficient to be used with elders. The IoT-based remote monitoring can be used to monitor elders without any safety concerns and in an effective and uninterrupted way by deploying all the implementations in a typical living scenario. Currently, there are systems that facilitate self-care and extend the independence of aging population. Such systems are often known as assisted living systems. The main aims of the systems are to enable elderly people to independently live longer in their own homes, to enhance living qualities, and to reduce costs for society and public health systems. Assisted living systems can help support elderly persons with their daily activities in order to help them maintain healthy and safety while living independently. In this chapter, IoT technologies for elderly health care will be detailed.