Can smart homes extend people with Alzheimer’s disease stay at home?

Abstract

Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to analyse the needs of people with Alzheimer's disease and their caregivers in terms of information and communications technology (ICT) and home automation, and how to foster the use of smart devices in their homes and also, to determine whether the use of ICT can extend people with Alzheimer's disease stay at home in the first stages of the illness, while facilitating their caregivers' tasks. Design/methodology/approach-Groups of caregivers, ICT researchers and Alzheimer's disease experts were gathered to discuss the utility of several solutions. Sessions were grouped into four topics: safety, leisure, activities of daily living and friendly atmosphere. In total, 23 ICT-based solutions to improve life at home of people with Alzheimer's disease were analysed and grouped under "no interest', "some interest" and "very interesting". Caregivers rated these solutions and suggested improvements to them. Findings-In total, 18 out of 23 proposals were considered "very interesting", meaning that caregivers considered that they could truly improve the lives of people with Alzheimer's disease. Caregivers also suggested how to progressively introduce these technical solutions into their homes. Originality/value-ICT and home automation advances could be very useful if used conveniently. Caregivers consider that smart homes can help people with Alzheimer's disease in the security, leisure and daily tasks fields, increasing the time they can live alone in their own homes. Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia and possibly contributes to 60-70 per cent of cases (Alzheimer's Association, 2014). This paper will focus on people with Alzheimer's disease and their caregivers. Caring for people with Alzheimer's disease living at home could take many hours a day (up to nine hours in Greece (Rodrigues ef al., 2012)). This task is often performed by family members who have to balance their personal and work activities with taking care of their family members. However, caring for people with Alzheimer's disease can be facilitated by new technologies such as home automation and ICT that have emerged in recent years.

Factors Influencing the Adoption of Smart Health Technologies for People With Dementia and Their Informal Caregivers: Scoping Review and Design Framework

“…As mentioned in the study by Patterson et al [40], technologies even become invisible for the PwD maximizing its integration. A sudden introduction is recognized as a barrier, as it can make PwD reject technology [41,42].…”

“…Smallness and discreteness for home-installed and body-worn devices were considered less stigmatizing in the literature [22,59,61,62]. Furthermore, it seems that PwD respond better to devices that have a familiar aspect [8,59], for example, televisions (TVs) with adapted interfaces to mimic older sets [41]. In regard to user interface design, the most frequent recommendation is that it should be user-friendly, simplified, and easy and clear to use [11,44,61,63-66].…”

“…s-Health technologies in this field should try to support PwD, not seeing them as just mere objects or former humans that have lost their memory and abilities [93]. Technology should promote social interaction and avoid isolation [41]. Loneliness and sadness are very common in PwD and their informal caregivers; because of the disease progression, their social network keeps reducing, rendering them even more isolated.…”