Abstract-Smart homes have significant potential to enhance the lives of older adults, extending the period of healthy ageing, through monitoring wellbeing, detecting decline and applying interventions to prevent or slow down this decline. In this paper we present results from interviews with 7 older adults who have been living in smart homes for over 4 years. Our aims were to 1) examine attitudes to living with sensors and AAL technology over time; 2) gather opinions on the usefulness of this data for supporting self-management of health and wellbeing and 3) evaluate the effectiveness of various visualization techniques for presenting sensor-based health and wellness data. Our findings show that older adults are interested in receiving feedback from sensor technology to support them self-managing their wellbeing. Potential beneficial information includes time spent inside and outside the home, walking time, sleep, activity, blood pressure and weight. This information needs to be enhanced by education and goal-setting and by representing data using visualisations that are simple and intuitive.

Abstract-As the population ages, smart home technology and applications are expected to support older adults to age in place and reduce the associated economic and societal burden. This paper describes a study where the relationship between ambient sensors, permanently deployed as part of smart aware apartments, and clinically validated health questionnaires is investigated. 27 sets of ambient data were taken from a 28 day block from 13 participants all of whom were over 60 years old. Features derived from ambient sensor data were found to be significantly correlated to measures of anxiety, sleep quality, depression, loneliness, cognition, quality of life and independent living skills (IADL). Subsequently, linear discriminant analysis was shown to predict participants suffering from increased anxiety and loneliness with a high accuracy (≥70%). While the number of participants is small, this study reports that objective ambient features may be used to infer clinically validated health metrics. Such findings may be used to inform interventions for active and healthy ageing.

~Two studies were conducted to investigate the possibility that pteroylmonoglutamic acid supplementation would alleviate teratogenesis in zinc-deficient rats. Pregnant rats of the Wistar strain were fed on Zndeficient ( < 0.5 mg Zn/kg) or Zn-supplemented (75 or 95 mg Zn/kg) diets from mating until day 18.5 of gestation. The basal level of pteroylmonoglutamic acid added to all diets (056mglkg) was supplemented with 30-200 mg/kg in selected diets. Dietary Zn deprivation resulted in fetal resorption, fetal growth retardation and reduced concentrations of Zn in fetuses and maternal plasma and tibia. Low maternal body-weight at conception emerged as an important determinant of risk of resorption in Zndeficient rats. Dietary Zn deficiency resulted in reduced maternal plasma folate concentrations and these values were inversely correlated with litter size or weight in Zn-deficient rats. Pteroylmonoglutamic acid supplementation increased maternal plasma folate concentrations, but did not reduce the high incidence of teratogenesis which occurred in Zn-deficient rats. Supplementation of Zn-deficient rats with pteroylmonoglutamic acid significantly increased the incidence of clubbed foot and tended to increase the incidence of brain or meningeal abnormalities, or both, and cleft palate, but did not reduce maternal or fetal Zn status. Pteroylmonoglutamic acid supplementation also increased the weights of Znsupplemented control fetuses.

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With an ageing population and the constant need towards improving the quality of life for older people in our society, there comes an urgent challenge to support people where they live in an environment that adapts to their needs as they age. While much research on ubiquitous sensor systems and telehealth devices focuses on this need, many of these solutions operate at less than full capacity, and with little scope at present to assess everyday aspects of wellbeing. They focus on detecting sudden critical physiological and behavioural changes and offer few mechanisms to support preventative actions. The challenge of predicting changes and prompting positive preventative intervention measures, aiding the avoidance of severe physical or mental harm, has not adequately been addressed. This paper discusses our experiences of designing, deploying and testing an integrated home-based ambient assisted living (AAL) system for older adults, consisting of ambient monitoring, behaviour recognition and feedback to support self-management of wellness, in addition to providing feedback on home security and home energy. It offers a complete system overview of an AAL solution in smart environments and discusses our lessons learned with the goal of assisting other researchers in the field in designing and deploying similar environments.