Digital cities of the future: Extending @home assistive technologies for the elderly and the disabled

In the digital city of the future there is the vision of seamless virtual and physical access for every home and between each home and the workplace, as well as critical city infrastructure such as the post office, the bank, hospitals, transportation systems, and other entities. This paper provides an overview of technical and other issues in extending at home (@home) assistive technologies for the elderly and the disabled. The paper starts by giving a vision of what this city is supposed to look like and how a human is to act, navigate and function in it. A framework for extending assistive technologies is proposed that considers individuals belonging to special groups of interest and locations other than their home. Technology has already reached the state of ubiquitous and pervasive sensor devices measuring everything, from temperature to human behavior. Implanting intelligence into and connecting such devices will be of immense use in preventive healthcare, security in industrial installations, greater energy efficiency, and numerous other applications. The paper reviews enabling technologies that exist and focuses on healthcare applications that support a longer and higher quality of life at home for the elderly and the disabled. It discusses intelligent platforms involving agents, context-aware and location-based services, and classification systems that enable advanced monitoring and interpretation of patient status and optimization of the environment to improve medical assessments. The paper concludes with a discussion of some of the challenges that exist in extending @home assistive technologies to @city assistive technologies. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.