Using Smart Wearable Devices for Supporting Patients Affected by Dementia in Rural Areas of Calabria

Abstract

The improvement of health and social care needs the introduction of shared solution at transnational level. The SI4CARE (Social Inno- vation for Integrated Health Care) project is a transnational initiative within the Adriatic-Ionian regions aiming to develop strategies to improve the current status of health and social care. The project member Municipality of Miglierina, a small rural town in Calabria, is developing a pilot action related to the use of wearable device for monitoring people affected by dementia together with the project partner Ra.Gi.. Ra.Gi. is a non-profit organization dedicated to assisting people with dementia in day care centers and so-called dementia-friendly communities. The pilot is based on the use of smart wearable devices to monitor these patients during their daily lifetime. This paper focuses on the design and implementation of the system discussing the proposed application, the strengths and weaknesses. We report results from a pilot experiment showing the effectiveness of this approach. Finally, the possibility of extending the experiment to the other Adriatic-Ionian region is presented.