Recognition of familiar people with a mobile cloud architecture for Alzheimer patients

Abstract

Our architecture showed correct performance and we realized that it could be introduced in other fields, apart from assistive technology. However, when being targeted to patients with dementia some usability problems appeared, such as difficulties to read information in a small screen or take a proper photo. These problems should be addressed in further research. Implications for Rehabilitation This article presents a prototypal assistive technology for Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients. It targets AD patients to recognize their familiars, especially in medium-advanced stages of the disease. Analysing pictures taken by a smart watch, which the patient carries, the person in front is recognized and information about him is sent to the watch. This technology enables patients to have all the information of any close person, as a remainder, easing their daily lives, improving their self-esteem and stimulating the patient with novel technology.

A Qualitative Impairment in Face Perception in Alzheimer’s Disease: Evidence from a Reduced Face Inversion Effect

“…However, one of the most striking symptoms of AD is the failure to recognize familiar people [3,4], a function that relies heavily on visual inputs, especially the persons' faces, rather than auditory inputs (i.e., voices). In AD, the impaired ability to recognize familiar persons has typically been attributed to the underlying memory impairment [5].…”

Healthcare Applications of Smart Watches

“…In most of the studies (18, 75%) there was no mention of human-computer interaction, user-centered design, or pre-implementation usability testing as part of their study design or intervention. However, two studies utilized user-centered design during the design phase [15,22], one study had a brief evaluation of the user interface [27], and three studies mentioned usability testing in the context of future work [12,18,20].…”

“…This is not surprising since the first Android Wear started shipping in July 2014, whereas the Apple Watch was not available until April 10, 2015. While our study was designed to review the literature on healthcare applications of smart watches, a large amount of selected studies utilized the combination of a smart watch and a smart phone [11,15,22,25,27,29,34]. Although the smart watch has emerged as a standalone computing device intended to be used by the wearers with or without the concomitant use of a smart phone, currently most smart watches rely on a smart phone to assist their computing or connection abilities.…”

“…Another category of research found on this review is related to smart watch applications in patients with neurologic diseases, including PD, Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy, and stroke [13,15,17,19,24,29,33,34]. Neurologic diseases are amongst the major causes of disabilities, and those coping with these disabilities may benefit from assistive technology using smart watches.…”

“…Another focus from this review emphasizes the importance of enhancing the user experience through usability testing, to evaluate a product before implementation. However, only two studies utilized user-centered design in the design phase, and only one study described a user interface evaluation [15,22,27]. No studies followed rigorous usability testing guidelines [49].…”