METs as Gamified Health Indicator to Promote Elderly Active Lifestyle and Technology Acceptance in Ambient Assisted Living

Abstract

This chapter focuses on ambient assisted living (AAL) scenarios and proposes the use of location-based games (LBGs) as engaging applications for 1) the promotion of an active lifestyle of healthy senior adults (+65), and 2) the enhancement of current acceptance rates of technology used in these scenarios. It offers a high-level software architecture that can be used to integrate health indicators produced from gameplay data of LBGs with AAL healthcare systems, thus serving as data sources capable of contributing to better professional healthcare support. The proposed concept enables care providers in AAL settings to recommend gaming exercises that can be done through LBGs; in turn, such professionals have access to health indicators (metabolic expenditure) of the gameplay, which can then be compared to the WHO recommendations for an active lifestyle of older adults. This concept enables the use of digital LBGs running on commonly available smartphones without the need for extra hardware, as applications that are more engaging and motivational than traditional technologies by design. A test of concept for the proposed architecture is presented, whereby the health indicator METs is offered from multiple gameplay data provided by an LBG, and where such indicator is compared to dedicated hardware.