A caregiving assistant for the elderly

Abstract

In the recent years, population aging has attracted much attention. There is a demand to let the elderly to be independent in their daily living while timely and proper assistant is available when they are in need. In Hong Kong, there exists a service called Mobile Link service for the elderly to call the operators for help in the outdoors when there is an emergency. However, the solution is more like a partial solution because there is only a care taking service from the Mobile Link involved, there is no involvement of the family members. Further evaluations of such products are given in this report. In my project, a more comprehensive solution is designed and implemented. After reviewing different kinds of technologies, GPS and a newer technology - Wifi are chosen as the location determination technologies. A survey has been conducted to gather opinions from the elderly and major requirements of the system were defined. The system design was done, hardware and software needed in the project were identified. The implementation process then began. The Caregiving Assistant (CA) that has two main components is developed. The first component is a mobile application for location tracking called LocateU. It is installed in an elder’s mobile phone and the elder is able to call for help with one single button. Meanwhile, not only the care taking service provider can identify the client's location, the elder's family can also know where the elder is about using a web-based system. The second component of CA is a web-based application called CareU that supports assistant service. One of the features is to make the location history of an elder available and using it to infer the places where the elder is likely to be around. The elderly and their family members can also compose reminder message that will be sent to the elderly at the requested time. In addition, family members can now view the calling history to learn more about the need of the elderly.