Caregiver needs from elder care assistive smart homes: Nursing assessment

With the elderly population on the rise, assistive smart technology is positioned to help the assisted living community take on the upcoming age wave. Even with the notable volume of sensor data collected and medical applications of these systems, there are few researchers formally evaluating the needs of caregivers and how that data can help them. This study attempts to inform researchers and engineers building smart technologies to better understand the needs of nurses as caregivers to the elderly. Interviews suggest that nutrition, sleep length and quality, cleanliness of the individual, safety, and elopement by cognitively impaired individuals are of central concern. It is also important for programmers to make graphs with axis that have real world reliability. Sensor "events" are not relevant to nursing staff, and should not be presented in their raw form. Time increments are more appropriate for this population than number of sensor events. With a little extra care to the needs of caregivers during the design of user-facing tools, assistive smart homes can truly become helpful to keep our aging population independent for longer.