Article – From the horse’s mouth
Lab Of Things Helping Seniors Who Live Alone | Microsoft Research
My Comments
I have provided a lot of coverage regarding the concept of technology assisting the “ageing at home” principle where older and infirm people can stay at home and live in dignity knowing that the people close to them and their carers can act as a safety net for them.
Here, I had covered technology being used to guide seniors with shopping and food-preparation along with use of existing technology like cameras for medical observation. I have also covered in an article about CSIRO doing research in this field with a view of using the “Internet Of Everything” technology like energy sensors, movement sensors and smart locks to assess whether someone is keeping well such as knowing if they are going in to the kitchen to keep themselves nourished or if they are surfacing and going outside to collect the paper or mail.
Microsoft is working with their research laboratories in China to address the issue of ageing at home in the Asian communities. This is because these communities are becoming increasingly older like most of the world thanks to the good healthcare that is being made available to them.
Here, they are identifying how older people who are living independently at home coping, including factoring in cultural issues. They are also implementing robotics to build a medical-supplies trolley to serve the medicines that these people will need at the proper times as well as shoehorning the Kinect movement sensor as a fall sensor to detect if one is falling or convulsing.
The medicine trolley doesn’t just work with medicines that require regular doses but also can work with medicines that are taken in response to symptoms like asthma attacks and is based around knowing what the symptoms will look like. The Kinect sensor as a fall sensor has to work in a manner to assure personal privacy which is important because of the fact that some of these falls or convulsions can occur when one is using the bathroom or toilet and these devices could be located there.
What I see of this is various technologies that make use of the computer, the home network and the Internet Of Everything are being used to create a safety net for older people or people with chronic illnesses who want to preserve independence and dignity.
