Integrated smart home services and smart wearable technology for the disabled and elderly

Abstract

Smart Home is indeed a broad concept which includes the techniques and systems applied to living spaces. While its main goal is to reduce the consumption of energy, it provides many benefits including living in comfort, security and increasing flexibility. Smart homes are achieved through networking, control and automation technologies. Since smart homes offer more comfort and security and provide novel innovative services, people with disabilities or the elderly can take the advantages and improve their life quality. However, for such novel services, an analytical infrastructure which can manage overall data flow provided by various sensors, understand anomalous behaviour, and make necessary decisions. In this study, for efficient data handling and visualisation, an integrated smart service approach based on the use of a smart vest is proposed. The smart vest plays a key role in the proposed system since it provides the main health parameters of the monitored person to the smart home service and enables tracking of the monitored person's location. The proposed system offers many benefits to both people with disabilities and the elderly and their families in terms of increased efficiency of health care service and comfort for the monitored person. It can also reduce the cost of health care services by reducing the number of periodical visits.