Intelligent technologies for seniors
Age-appropriate support systems are to enable seniors to live at home longer.
According to forecasts, Germany will have one of the world’s oldest populations in 2035. The number of people who require nursing care will also increase. However, very few people would like to spend their sunset years in a nursing home. Most would much prefer to remain in their own four walls – quite apart from the fact that this also reduces the strains on the healthcare system.
For some years now German research institutions and companies have been working on age-appropriate support systems intended to enable older people to lead an independent life at home. The Federal Republic is supporting this approach with its research programme “Old Age Has a Future” and the demographic strategy “Every Age Counts”. Thus, for example, SensFloor, a joint project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, developed a special kind of carpet that can be laid under floor coverings, such as fitted carpets and laminate or parquet flooring, and uses sensors to analyze the movements of residents. If necessary, it can raise the alarm – for example, when someone falls and doesn’t get up again or stops moving around the apartment.
Ambient Assisted Living
Solutions like this are also being studied by several Fraunhofer Institutes in an alliance called Ambient Assisted Living. They have developed an intelligent bed, for example, that recognizes the sleeper’s lying position and analyzes sleep behaviour. It also provides information about whether the sleep position is healthy and helps prevent bedsores among people with limited mobility. Using home monitoring systems like those offered by locate solution GmbH, it is even possible to locate people and objects in different rooms and record their movements as well as the room temperature and brightness. If desired, the system registers irregularities and dangers such as smoke emissions.
Very few seniors have such systems at the moment. That is because industry still has to develop uniform standards. However, Univers AAL, an EU-funded international consortium, is already working on that.
International Day of Older Persons on 4 April 2014
