Healthcare in the Smart Home: A Study of Past, Present and Future

Abstract

Ubiquitous or Pervasive Computing is an increasingly used term throughout the technology industry and is beginning to enter the consumer electronics space in its most recent form under the umbrella term: "Internet of Things". One area of focus is in augmenting the home with intelligent, networked sensors and computers to create a Smart Home which opens a host of possibilities for the role of tomorrow's dwelling. As the world's population continues to live longer and consequently experience more medical-related ailments, at the same time institutional healthcare is struggling to cope, the role of the Smart Home becomes paramount to monitoring a dweller's health and providing any necessary intervention. This study looks at the history of Smart Home Healthcare, current research areas, and potential areas of future investigation. Unique categorisations are presented in Activities of Daily Living (ADL) and Personal Sensors, and a thorough look at the application of Smart Home Healthcare is presented. Technology can augment traditional methods of healthcare delivery and in some cases completely replace it. Costs can be reduced and medical adherence can be increased, all of which contribute to a more sustainable and effective model of care.

A Review of Medication Adherence Monitoring Technologies

“…• Wrist-Worn Sensors: When reviewing sensor-based systems, one should not ignore personal sensors. Personal sensors are a class of wearables that can be used for fashion and tracking purposes, such as smartwatches [114]. Nonetheless, these wearables embed miniaturized and continuously progressing capabilities including Inertial Measurements Units (IMUs) (accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer or a combination of these) [115,116].…”

“…So far, vision-based systems have been the basis for a number of important healthcare applications. In the context of human activity recognition within smart environments or "Smart Homes" [114], where ambient assistive living (AAL) technologies [2] exist; one choice for monitoring medication intake is to use vision modules for identifying and tracking inhabitants, motion, gestures, and subjects. In this section, we depict the current vision-based systems for medication intake monitoring and discuss their pros and cons.…”

Application of IoT in Healthcare: Keys to Implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals

“…Specifically, speaking of systems applicable to people's health, we can choose and differentiate some of them. In some cases, research is focused on simple, low-cost, ubiqui-tous devices for monitoring people's health [52]; in other cases, a general review is made, and different sensors and intelligent systems applied to the care of people at home are detailed [53].…”

Integration and Applications of Fog Computing and Cloud Computing Based on the Internet of Things for Provision of Healthcare Services at Home

“…Furthermore, another advanced technique, referred to as Fog Computing, brings the computing and storing resources closer to users [9]. Cloud Computing and Fog Computing are two methods that facilitate access to IoT-based applications in healthcare [10].…”