Many rural areas along Spain do not have access to the Internet. Despite the huge spread of technology that has taken place during recent years, some rural districts and isolated villages have a lack of proper communication infrastructures. Moreover, these areas and the connected regions are notably experiencing a technological gap. As a consequence of this, the implementation of technological health solutions becomes impracticable in these zones where demographic conditions are especially particular. Thus, inhabitants over 65 suppose a large portion of such population, and many elderly people live alone at their homes. These circumstances also impact on local businesses which are widely related to the agricultural and livestock industry. Taking into account this situation, this paper proposes a solution based on an opportunistic network algorithm which enables the deployment of technological communication solutions for both elderly healthcare and livestock industrial activities in rural areas. This way, two applications are proposed: a presence detection platform for elderly people who live alone and an analytic performance measurement system for livestock. The algorithm is evaluated considering several simulations under multiple conditions, comparing the delivery probability, latency, and overhead outcomes with other well-known opportunistic routing algorithms. As a result, the proposed solution quadruples the delivery probability of Prophet, which presents the best results among the benchmark solutions and greatly reduces the overhead regarding other solutions such as Epidemic or Prophet. This way, the proposed approach provides a reliable mechanism for the data transmission in these scenarios.
The increasingly common scenario of an ageing population is related to a rise in the prevalence of problems associated with chronic conditions and comorbidities. Polypharmacy is frequent among this population, and it is a situation that can create medication management and adherence issues. This article introduces the features and functionalities of a voice assistant (Assistant on Health and Care Offline, ACHO) that aims to facilitate treatment adherence among elderly adults. Specifically adapted for its use in rural contexts, it does not require an Internet connection. Its development consisted of two stages: a first stage of problem diagnosis, in which the classic tools of ethnographic fieldwork were used, and a second stage of design implementing methodologies developed by Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) programmes. The main design characteristic of this new digital care system is that it is adapted to the needs of its end-users. It includes features such as voice customisation and the personal identification of medication, it can be connected to other digital devices, and information is introduced and supervised by healthcare professionals. These custom features introduce a safer medication administration procedure, improve supervision strategies, and increase patients’ trust in the prescription process.
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