Identifying the Needs of Older People for Personalized Assistive Solutions in Romanian Healthcare System

Lidia BĂJENARU, Ion Alexandru MARINESCU, Ciprian DOBRE, Rozeta DRĂGHICI, Anna Marie HERGHELEGIU, Alexandra RUSU

Abstract

The new demographic perspectives lead to the necessity to develop new solutions based on the Internet of Things (IoT) technology, which is designed for the early identification of the health issues of the elderly people and for providing support to them so as to understand the factors that limit their Quality of Life (QoL). An adaptive technology, a personalized intervention and integrated wearable IoT devices have the potential to improve the national healthcare systems, especially the least developed ones, the efficacity of the provided services and thus, the QoL and the wellbeing of the elderly. This paper presents a user-oriented approach to the development of personalised assistive solutions in the field of elderly care, by identifying the needs and preferences of the older adults and translating them into development requirements of the vINCI platform, an ecosystem capable of providing a non-intrusive and personalised monitoring of physical and health parameters. In this regard, prior to the development of vINCI platform, two questionnaires were applied to a group of 62 participants aged 65 years or older without severe impairments, who were admitted as inpatients to “Ana Aslan” National Institute of Gerontology and Geriatrics in Bucharest and 62 formal and informal caregivers, with the purpose of identifying the needs of users. The vINCI technology aims to help the elderly people live independently and provides support for the implementation of preventive measures for healthcare.

Keywords

IoT technology, Smart sensors, Elderly needs, Personalized assistive solutions, vINCI technology.

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