The demographic development leads to an increasing number of elderly people with limited mental and physical capabilities and the need for medical attention. In addition, the demand for services that emphasize on comfort during every day life rises. Our society is faced with the responsibility to care for these people in the best possible human but also economical ways. As a consequence, a growing number of elderly people today have to leave their homes and spend the rest of their life in nursing homes. Living assistance for elderly people focuses on the support of mainly elderly and to some extend of handicapped people for their living at home. Those kinds of living assistance systems aim at extending the potential of elderly people for living in their own home as long as possible and by making their life as healthy, save, and comfortable as possible. The tasks of such an assisted living systems can be separated into several main areas:
- Monitoring and Assistance – e.g., helping the elderly to keep a structured everyday life; reminding to take medicine, to drink and eat; warn the elderly when eat-by dates are expired; monitoring vital functions and communicate the data to the doctor; the system recognizes falling down or cardiac infarction of the elderly.
- Interaction – e.g., enable the elderly to communicate with friends, relatives, or medical and care personal.
- Medication – e.g., controlling the medication of the elderly by reminding them to take, for example, pills or by explicitly dispensing medication.
Living assistance systems aim at extending the potential of elderly people for living in their own home as long as possible. Such systems provide services that help elderly people to sustain their structured everyday life, to perform daily tasks, to keep contact with friends and medial/care persons, to keep healthy, and to inform others when an emergency occurs.