Page 250 - Handbook of Electronic Assistive Technology

Chapter 8 • Assisted Living 239

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energy consumption and provide remote management, but the potential problems asso-
ciated with mass rollout of such low-cost devices has recently been illustrated. 5

Safety Monitoring

The passing of critical event information from sensors to external systems or care entities
in support of the management of risk for the individual has been employed in a number of
projects. It has been used to pass information to carers within the immediate vicinity and
to trigger the dispersed alarm system. The Deptford flat configured by BIME supported
the individual interactively and also triggered the dispersed alarm unit in certain combi-
nations of circumstances. The Tayside LD projects were heavily focused on monitoring.
The British Telecom (BT)/Anchor project developed a dedicated safety monitoring/alert-
ing system, and as a direct enhancement of a dispersed alarm system could be considered
a telecare system (Anchor Trust, 1999). But in terms of Doughty’s ‘three generations of
telecare’ (Doughty and Cameron, 1996) it is difficult to state exactly where it should be
placed. It used arrays of very simple sensors linked by a receiving interface to the standard
public communications network, but data was uploaded in packets to a central controller
for analysis, and subsequent analysis and action were automatically taken, which com-
prised automated telephone calls to the individual. The system, which was trialled with
22 individuals across four cities, was demonstrated to create a significant number of false
alarms (Porteus and Brownsell, 2000) and although a number of researchers have demon-
strated that data from everyday activities might practically be used to identify deviations
from normal activity and possible alert situations (Cardinaux et al., 2008), viable solu-
tions remain elusive. Given the challenges still facing effective automated interpretation
of activity data, a monitoring system, i.e., one containing primarily sensors, appears in
the light of current developments to offer benefits as an adjunct to a telehealth system.
It has been shown that some activity data, when directly associated with relevant vital
signs monitoring, can potentially enhance the profiling of the individual’s health status
(Scanaill and Carew, 2006).
Interaction of telecare with smart homes has long been considered as a natural evolu-
tion (Tang and Venables, 2000). From the early days of telecare research and development,
the development beyond basic active triggering of an alert by the user to more pervasive
monitoring was envisaged, and intelligence was considered a key aspect in a fully imple-
mented system. Williams et al. (1998) described implicit capabilities such as:

1� Receiving information from a number of sources.
2� Analysis of the information.
3� Communicating internally within a ‘smart’ home environment and externally with
healthcare and emergency services.

4 https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/gas/retail-market/metering/transition-smart-meters.
5 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/energy-bills/11643750/1.5-million-smart-meters-
wont-work-when-you-switch-energy-supplier.html.