Assistance For Elderly People Research Articles

Mutation‐Guided Metamorphic Testing of Optimality in AI Planning

ABSTRACTAutonomous systems such as space‐ or underwater‐exploration robots or elderly people assistance robots often include an artificial intelligence (AI) planner as a component. Starting from the initial state of a system, an AI planner automatically generates sequential plans to reach final states that satisfy user‐specified goals. Generating plans having a minimum number of intermediate steps or taking the least time to execute is usually strongly desired, as these plans exhibit minimal costs. Unfortunately, testing if an AI planner generates optimal plans is almost impossible because the expected cost of these plans is usually unknown. Based on mutation adequacy test suite selection, this article proposes a novel metamorphic testing framework for detecting the lack of optimality in AI planners. The general idea is to perform a systematic but non‐exhaustive state space exploration from the initial state and to select mutant‐adequate states to instantiate new planning tasks as follow‐up test cases. We then check a metamorphic relation between the automatically generated solutions of the AI planner for these new test cases and the cost of the initial plan. We implemented this metamorphic testing framework in a tool called MorphinPlan. Our experimental evaluation shows that MorphinPlan can detect non‐optimal behaviour in both mutated AI planners and off‐the‐shelf, configurable planners. It also shows that our proposed mutation adequacy test selection strategy outperforms three alternative test generation and selection strategies, including both random state selection and random walks through the state space in terms of mutation scores.

IoT based Medicine Box Assistance for Elderly People

This system addresses the issue of medication adherence by providing timely reminders for patients to take their prescribed medication and ensuring only authorized users access the medication box. Combining physical and digital reminders, it offers a solution suitable for individuals of all ages, particularly on aiding elderly individuals who are prone to forgetting their medication schedules. Emphasizing ease of use and cost-effectiveness, the system integrates microcontroller technology, IoT systems, Facial recognition and an alarm system to prompt patients to take their medication as per their prescription. Designed to be portable and affordable, this smart medicine box is especially beneficial for elderly and illiterate patients, relieving family members of the burden of ensuring medication adherence. This paper describes an overview of a smart medicine box, which acts as an assistive device to avoid non-compliance with medicine. It consists of a hardware box with compartments for a week (three times a day), as well as an Android application for reminding the respective patient and informing the family members (caregiver) whether the patient has taken the medicines or not.

A model-based reference architecture for complex assistive systems and its application

Complex assistive systems providing human behavior support independent of the age or abilities of users are broadly used in a variety of domains including automotive, production, aviation, or medicine. Current research lacks a common understanding of which architectural components are needed to create assistive systems that use models at runtime. Existing descriptions of architectural components are focused on particular domains, consider only some parts of an assistive system, or do not consider models at runtime. We have analyzed common functional requirements for such systems to be able to propose a set of reusable components, which have to be considered when creating assistive systems that use models. Such components constitute a reference architecture that we propose within this paper. To validate the proposed architecture, we have expressed the architectures of two assistive systems from different domains, namely assistance for elderly people and assistance for operators in smart manufacturing in terms of compliance with such architecture. The proposed reference architecture will facilitate the creation of future assistive systems.

Evaluation of IoT-Based Smart Home Assistance for Elderly People Using Robot

In the development of Internet-of-things (IoT)-based technology, there is a pre-programmed robot called Cyborg which is used for assisting elderly people. It moves around the home and observes the surrounding conditions. The Cyborg is developed and used in the smart home system. The features of a smart home system with IoT technology include temperature control, lighting control, surveillance, security, smart electricity, and water sensors. Nowadays, elderly people may not be able to maintain their homes appropriately and may feel uncomfortable performing day-to-day activities. Therefore, Cyborg can be used to carry out the activities of elderly people. Such activities include switching off unnecessary lights, watering plants, gas control, monitoring intruders or unknown persons, alerting elderly people in emergency situations, etc. These activities are controlled by web-based platforms as well as smartphone applications. The issues with the existing algorithms include that they are inefficient, require a long time for implementation, and have high storage space requirements. This paper proposes the k-nearest neighbors (KNN) with an artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm (KNN-ABC). In this proposed work, KNN-ABC is used with wireless sensor devices for perceiving the surroundings of the smart home. This work implements the automatic control of electronic appliances, alert signal processors, intruder detection, and performs day-to-day activities automatically in an efficient way. GNB for intruder detection in the smart home environment system using the Cyborg human intervention robot achieved an accuracy rate of 88.12%, the Artificial Bee Colony algorithm (ABC) achieved 90.12% accuracy on the task of power saving in smart home electronic appliances, the KNN technique achieved 91.45% accuracy on the task of providing a safer pace to the elderly in the smart home environment system, and our proposed KNN-ABC system achieved 93.72%.

Emergency Health Monitoring Assistance for Elderly People

Emergency Health Monitoring Assistance for Elderly People

Personal Assistance for Elderly People using Mobile Application

At 110 million, India has the second largest global population of ageing citizens. The elderly Indian population is one of the fastest growing in the world. By 2045, population will be probably more than 200 million. Today, majority of the people are migrating to urban areas. In rural areas, due to less employment opportunities, low wages, drought, lack of basic amenities, landlessness, social factors act, people migrate to urban areas to get more employment opportunities, higher income, better wages, better facilities activities and live far away from their parents. In this scenario, the entire responsibility of the house falls on the elderly parents, which creates stress on them and children also worry about their parents how will they handle alone. Losing the ability to perform normal tasks of daily living makes aging adults feel that they are losing independence and control over their lives. In India, there are many families at the moment who are going through this situation. For most of the Indian senior citizens, the biggest concerns are healthcare costs, lack of financial support and isolation. In addition, most of the aged are not accorded the dignity of care they deserve in later life. Due to the aging of parents, increasing heath issues and deprivation of knowledge of online media, they are unable to do all the necessary work. They have no one when they need help. And if there is someone for help, it is difficult to trust on them.

Design of a powered full-body exoskeleton for physical assistance of elderly people

The development of full-body exoskeletons has been limited due to design complexities, mechanical integration intricacies, and heavier weight, among others. Consequently, very few full-body powered exoskeletons were developed to address these challenges, in spite of increasing demand for physical assistance at full-body level. This article presents an overall design and development of a powered full-body exoskeleton called “FB-AXO.” Primarily, FB-AXO consists of two main subsystems, a lower-body and an upper-body subsystem connected together through waist and spine modules. FB-AXO is developed for the support of weaker ageing adults so that they can continue functioning their daily activities. At the onset of the project, a set of functional and design requirements has been formulated with an extensive end-user involvement and then used in realizing the FB-AXO. The final FB-AXO design comprises of 27 degrees of freedom, of which 10 are active and 17 are passive, having a total system weight of 25 kg. Overall, the article elaborates comprehensively the design, construction, and preliminary testing of FB-AXO. The work effectively addresses design challenges including kinematic compatibility and modularity with innovative solutions. The details of the mechanics, sensors, and electronics of the two subsystems along with specifics of human-exoskeleton interfaces and ranges of motion are also provided. The FB-AXO exoskeleton effectively demonstrated to assist full-body motions such as normal walking, standing, bending as well as executing lifting and carrying tasks to meet the daily living demands of older users.

Towards dense people detection with deep learning and depth images

This paper describes a novel DNN-based system, named PD3net, that detects multiple people from a single depth image, in real time. The proposed neural network processes a depth image and outputs a likelihood map in image coordinates, where each detection corresponds to a Gaussian-shaped local distribution, centered at each person’s head. This likelihood map encodes both the number of detected people as well as their position in the image, from which the 3D position can be computed. The proposed DNN includes spatially separated convolutions to increase performance, and runs in real-time with low budget GPUs. We use synthetic data for initially training the network, followed by fine tuning with a small amount of real data. This allows adapting the network to different scenarios without needing large and manually labeled image datasets. Due to that, the people detection system presented in this paper has numerous potential applications in different fields, such as capacity control, automatic video-surveillance, people or groups behavior analysis, healthcare or monitoring and assistance of elderly people in ambient assisted living environments. In addition, the use of depth information does not allow recognizing the identity of people in the scene, thus enabling their detection while preserving their privacy. The proposed DNN has been experimentally evaluated and compared with other state-of-the-art approaches, including both classical and DNN-based solutions, under a wide range of experimental conditions. The achieved results allows concluding that the proposed architecture and the training strategy are effective, and the network generalize to work with scenes different from those used during training. We also demonstrate that our proposal outperforms existing methods and can accurately detect people in scenes with significant occlusions.

Pharmaceutical Residues in Senior Residences Wastewaters: High Loads, Emerging Risks.

Senior residences are health-care facilities that are socially-accepted for the assistance of elderly people. Since the elderly account for the foremost pharmaceutical-consuming age-group, senior residences become a hot-spot for pharmaceuticals discharge to the sewage grid. The objectives of the present study were to identify the bioactive pharmaceuticals in sewage waters from senior residences and to propose an on-site monitoring strategy for their control. In this study, we have studied the presence of 43 pharmaceuticals highly consumed by the elderly population in six senior residences located in Spain, France and Portugal. Wastewater was sampled directly from the water-chest in each residence during different times of the day throughout one week. Main compounds detected at the high µg L−1 level were analgesic and antipyretic drugs such as acetylsalicylic acid, paracetamol, ibuprofen; antibiotics such as amoxicillin and sulfamethoxazole; compounds for the treatment of neuropathies as gabapentin, trazodone and valsartan; pharmaceuticals for the treatment of diabetes (vildagliptin) and anticancer drugs. The daily loads discharged were estimated and their fate was evaluated. The final objective of this study is to highlight the need to implement at-source waste water treatment procedures in senior residences, which have been identified as a point source pollution of pharmaceuticals.

Assistência odontológica para idosos durante a pandemia da COVID-19: Uma perspectiva brasileira

Aim: This study evaluated the need for dental assistance of elderly people during the COVID-19 outbreak. Methodology: This online observational survey included Brazilian elderly aged ≥ 60 years, with internet access from all Brazil's regions. They completed questionnaires regarding sociodemographic characteristics, general health, COVID fear (scale FCV-19S), and dental assistance. Data were tabulated and analyzed using descriptive and inferential analysis (α = 5%). Results: Overall, 705 elderly people completed the questionnaire. Most volunteers needed dental assistance (58.6%) although only 31.3% visited a dental office, reporting a dental urgency. Elderly had elective appointments (96.3%) in private dental services (95.9%), mostly accompanied during dental assistance (81.6%), without the need to wait (50.7%). Prosthodontic and restorative interventions were the most required procedures. In the dental office, the fear of being contaminated by COVID-19 existed in 53.9%, while the risk of being contaminated was considered medium (46%). Elderly from Northern, Northeastern, and Central-Western, with low educational level, previous COVID-19 diagnosis, and with highest FCV-19S scores had more fear of contamination in the dental office (all p <0.05). In Northern, Northeastern, and Southeastern Brazil, elderly with worse educational levels, and those with greatest FCV-19S scores (all p <0.05) considered the risk of being contaminated in dental offices. Conclusions: Finally, Brazilian elderly people still need dental assistance during the outbreak. Low-educational levels, previous COVID-19 diagnosis, fear of COVID-19, and highly affected Brazilian regions exhibited increased fear of being contaminated in the dental office, which may prevent them from seeking help.

The social support networks of elderly people in Slovenia during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Population ageing requires society to adjust by ensuring additional types of services and assistance for elderly people. These may be provided by either organized services and sources of informal social support. The latter are especially important since a lack of social support is associated with a lower level of psychological and physical well-being. During the Covid-19 pandemic, social support for the elderly has proven to be even more crucial, also due to physical distancing. Therefore, this study aims to identify and describe the various types of personal social support networks available to the elderly population during the pandemic. To this end, a survey of Slovenians older than 64 years was conducted from April 25 to May 4, 2020 on a probability web-panel-based sample (n = 605). The ego networks were clustered by a hierarchical clustering approach for symbolic data. Clustering was performed for different types of social support (socializing, instrumental support, emotional support) and different characteristics of the social support networks (i.e., type of relationship, number of contacts, geographical distance). The results show that most of the elderly population in Slovenia has a satisfactory social support network, while the share of those without any (accessible) source of social support is significant. The results are particularly valuable for sustainable care policy planning, crisis intervention planning as well as any future waves of the coronavirus.

Community health workers caring for dependent elderly people.

Community Health Workers (CHWs) are a link between Family Health Strategy (FHS) professionals and the community. This study aims to analyze health care professionals' perceptions and health management about CHWs' role in caring for dependent elderly people. A qualitative study was carried out, from a hermeneutic-dialectic perspective, with 38 professionals working in elderly people's health in cities in the five regions of Brazil. The results identified CHWs as facilitators of access to elderly people dependent on the health care network, gaps in continuing education and the reduced number of these professionals to meet the demand in primary care. Respondents attributed great importance to CHW's performance, valued their participation in FHS, but pointed out a lack of knowledge and difficulties to supply the adequate amount in health care services and in assistance of elderly people with dependence and family. It is concluded that health professionals and managers consider CHWs to be a great workforce and essential to the dependent elderly people and their caregivers. The number of CHWs is insufficient in relation to FHS, and there is a lack of training to deal with various types of dependence.

The Pemberdayaan Masyarakat dengan Aktivitas Leisure

Background: The temporary suspension of Posyandu Elderly activities has resulted in a decline in the role and function of health cadres in monitoring the health of the elderly. This is also accompanied by a decrease in the health condition of the elderly because they cannot carry out social leisure activities, which are generally carried out in the Elderly Posyandu activity forum. The purpose of this community service activity is so that cadres can optimize their role and function in monitoring the health of the elderly during a pandemic. The health of the elderly is maintained through the leisure activity program provided. Meanwhile, the elderly who are affected by Covid-19can still be guaranteed their basic needs through the distribution of existing assistance. Methods: For cadres are given counseling and training on the role of health cadres during a pandemic. Elderly people are given leisure activity programs carried out both individually and in small groups, facilitating leisure activities, counseling on preventing the spread of Covid-19, and distributing basic needs assistance for elderly people affected by Covid-19. Results: Kader has demonstrated its performance in monitoring the health of the elderly and helping facilitate elderly leisure activities. Elderly people can do leisure activities during the pandemic so they don't feel lonely anymore, feel happy because they can meet other elderly people of their age, don't feel overly afraid, and can participate in social activities to support the basic needs of elderly people affected by Covid-19. The awareness of the elderly in applying the new health norms has also increased. Conclusion: Of community empowerment with leisure activities during the pandemic can be realized thanks to cross-sectoral cooperation. This activity requires a follow-up in the form of evaluation and monitoring of existing programs.

Characteristics of the skills of caregivers of people with dementia: observational study

BackgroundDue to demographic change within an aging population as announced by the WHO, the involvement of caregivers is essential. Caregivers are required to change their roles within the family unit. Such life transitions experienced by caregivers to people confronted with dementia-type pathologies are sometimes difficult, necessitating the acquisition and development of certain skills. Few studies have shown that caregivers develop specific and essential skills to promote quality care and safety. To characterize their skills, there is a need to identify the abilities, knowledge, resources, obstacles and constraints that contribute to caregivers’ transitions. The research question for this study was: What skills do caregivers use to care for their loved one with dementia?MethodsQualitative observational research based on the epistemological paradigm of socioconstructivist knowledge was conducted. The study was carried out in the canton of Geneva and recruitment was carried out through the participation of the Alzheimer’s association and the association for the support and assistance of elderly people in medical and social institutions and their families (APAF). Observations and semi-structured interviews were conducted in the homes of 14 family carers caring for their loved one with dementia. The observations were transcribed on observation grids and the interviews were recorded. Subsequently, according to the classic distinction of Denzin (Interpretive interractionism, 2001), we analysed the observation notes and verbatims, then as recommended by Miles et al. (Qualitative data analysis: a methods sourcebook, 2014), two researchers triangulated the results.ResultsThe results identified five types of situations regularly experienced by caregivers. The study characterized 11 skills that caregivers use to cope with their daily lives. The learning process and maladaptive behaviours in caring for their loved ones with dementia were also highlighted.ConclusionThis study was able to point out that today’s caregivers have developed more competency than their predecessors. This evolution can be explained by new paradigms of care requiring caregivers to be more involved. Although some caregivers need training, others through their experiences can act upon and provide knowledge. To improve the quality and safety of care for people with dementia, this expertise can be the subject of partnerships between caregivers and health care staff.

Quanto il prendermi cura di te dice di me? Gli sguardi di chi lavora con la persona anziana in RSA a confronto

The present research is grounded in the authors’ experience of working with elderly people and their awareness of a cultural background that conceives the elderly in a rather preemptive and constellatory way. We used Personal Construct Psychology (PCP) as a lens to explore constructs and experiences around the caring relationship and assistance of elderly people, within a Nursing Home unit comprising social workers and nurses. From the thematic analysis of 17 semi-structured interviews emerged some commonalities in terms of preemptive and regnant constructions of their work and stereotypical constructions of the elderly person. Some minor difference emerged in terms of propositional constructions. The present study highlights the importance of facilitating supporting and developmental opportunities for care-providers.

Intelligent Platform for Non Intrusive Assistance of Elderly People

In this paper we present PIANI, an Intelligent Platform for Non Intrusive Assistance of Elderly People able to do activities in outdoor environments. PIANI allows inferring the risk level of the activity that an elderly person is currently doing out of his home. Also, our platform uses the smartphone of the user in order to collect geographic and time information which is used by the PIANIs server to calculate risk through formulas of probability and thus non intrusively determine the action to be performed when there is a high risk situation.

First psychiatric hospitalization in patients older than 65 years

IntroductionMedical assistance for elderly people with mental health problems increases at the same time that life expectancy does.ObjectivesThe aim of this work is to describe several demographic and clinical characteristics of elderly patients admitted for the first time to an acute inpatient psychiatry unit.MethodsObservational, descriptive, and retrospective study from June 2013 to May 2015, where it is analysed patients older than 65 years admitted to the acute psychiatric ward of Hospital de Getafe in that period without psychiatric hospitalization in their personal background.ResultsSeventeen patients were included of a total of 428 patients admitted in that period (3.97%). Mean age: 70.7 ± 4.7. A total of 10 male (58.9%). The average stay in the studied group was 18.5 days, slightly lower than general average stay in that period (19.2 days). No psychiatric background was found in 4 patients. The most common diagnoses was depressive episode (5 patients) followed by manic episode (4 patients) and delusional disorder. Every of them but one, were taking at least one antipsychotic drug at discharge.ConclusionsElderly patients represent a low percentage of the total of patients admitted to an acute inpatient psychiatry unit. Many of them, despite having long-term ambulatory psychiatric follow-up, require a first psychiatric hospitalization after 65 years, as well as other patients begin their treatment in the mental health services in that hospitalization. It is noteworthy that antipsychotic drugs are used very commonly in those patients.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.

Redefining robot based technologies for elderly people assistance: a survey

Redefining robot based technologies for elderly people assistance: a survey

Redefining robot based technologies for elderly people assistance: a survey

We analyse the state of the art of hi-tech and robot based technologies in terms of Assistive Technology for all patients and, in particular, elderly people assistance and everyday activities aid. We focus on different aspects and characteristics of these tools, such as playfulness, invasiveness, learning-speed, efficiency, short and long-term effect, active vs. passive, etc. We do so by showing the most important existing examples, and by taking into account all the possible factors that might help researchers when thinking of developing appropriate technologies for elderly care, as well as, for their relative assistance personnel. Indeed, while in rehabilitation robotics, a major role is played by the human–machine interface (HMI) used to gather the patient’s intent from biological signals, and convert them into control signals for the robotic artefacts, surprisingly, decades of research have not yet declared what the optimal HMI is in this context [1]. Further, there is an urgent need to clarify how various technologies can be a goal or an approach for preventive, rehabilitative and assistive interaction. Therefore, we try to make a first step towards a redefinition of Robotics Assistive Technology.

An Improved Algorithm for Collision Avoidance in Environments Having U and H Shaped Obstacles

This paper proposes a novel obstacle avoidance algorithm for autonomous mobile robot control. The proposed approach brings a solution to the problem of robot traversal in critical shaped environments and offers several advantages compared to the reported approaches. The algorithmic approach, named as, Intelligent Follow the Gap Method (IFGM) is based on improved Intelligent Bug Algorithm (IBA) and Follow the Gap Method (FGM). The robot field of view is taken into consideration. The IBA avoids obstacles by following their edge and scanning the path to destination, thus making the approach goal-oriented avoiding local minimum problem. To characterize the performance of IFGM, various scenarios of obstacles are considered. These scenarios range from having obstacles defined by simple and symmetrical shapes to critical shaped obstacles. The simulation results demonstrate that the algorithm results in safer and smoother trajectories in the presence of obstacles. It offers fast convergence and does not suffer from local minima. Finally, the performance comparison of the proposed algorithm with that of the reported approaches in terms of distance-time plots confirms the efficacy of the presented approach. The proposed algorithm lends itself to future implementations in the navigation of mobile and industrial robots, especially in applications exhibiting crucial time and critical obstacles including disaster management, spy, elderly people assistance and soccer games.