Towards Dementia-friendly Smart Homes.

Abstract

Care costs of People with Dementia (PwDs) bear a tremendous burden on healthcare systems around the world. Smart Homes (SHs), as an instance of the ambient assisted living technology, can help reduce these expenses. However, only few of the existing studies in the literature discuss how SHs should be designed by considering the unique requirements of PwDs. Most of the studies view dementia care as a straight application of standard SH technology without accommodating the specific needs of PwDs. A consequence of this approach is the inadequacy and unacceptability of generic SH systems to PwDs as well as other stakeholders in the sector of dementia care. The present research reports on the requirements elici-tation, design and evaluation of a dedicated SH prototype for PwDs. In contrast to most of the existing SH systems proposed for PwDs, this work presents a tailored prototype that is based on a user-centred design methodology. The preliminary evaluation by a sample of stakeholders shows the suitability of the proposed methodology and consequently the resulting prototype for reducing care difficulties as well as its potential of deployment in the real-world environment.