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This research explores current strategies and approaches directed to integrate innovative technologies in the home modification process to support independent living and ageing in place. The systematic review considered studies conducted from the perspective of architecture, smart technology, and gerontology. Scientific databases of related discipl...
Citations
... A new and fast-growing category of coping solutions holds even greater promise for older persons seeking to age in place (Carnemolla, 2018;Kakulla, 2021). Labels refer to them as information and communication technologies, smart homes, the internet of things, telehealth, assistive technology, and pervasive computing technologies (Davenport et al., 2012;Ma et al., 2022). I refer to these options as gerontechnology solutions (Etkin, 2021). ...
The future will witness the substantial worldwide growth of older people with functional limitations or disabilities who have difficulties leaving their dwellings and traveling to their neighborhoods or other community destinations to realize their obligatory and discretionary needs and goals. This commentary offers conceptual arguments and literature findings proposing that the dwellings of this vulnerable population deserve new scrutiny because they have become more salient and positively experienced places to live where their occupants can maintain their independence and age in place. The catalyst for this commentary is the emergence of gerontechnological innovations relying on digital and sensor technologies, offering these older occupants a new category of dwelling connectivity solutions—constituting a paradigm shift—whereby goods, care, services, social supports, and information and leisure activities can be delivered to their houses and apartments. Incorporating this technological component has transformed their dwellings into dynamic “control centers,” connecting their occupants in real-time with the resources and activities offered in other places. These solutions enable older people to cope more effectively with declines and losses because their ability to live independently is less threatened by challenges they face accessing destinations with inadequate transportation options and less age-friendly land use or physical design features. By occupying more supportive, safer, and connected dwellings, these older people have overall more positive and salient residential mastery emotional experiences and feel more competent and in control of their lives and environment. Planning or policy recommendations directed to the World Health Organization (WHO) and its age-friendly city/community agenda follow from its conclusions. They highlight how dwelling environments containing gerontechnological solutions are becoming more critical influences of “active aging.” The commentary recommends that WHO allocates more resources to dwelling interventions that increase the awareness, availability, usability, and acceptability of these gerontechnological solutions, thus reducing the disincentives for older people to be adopters.
... We argue a 'smart home' model will bring technology to assist in older adult care. Encouraging older adults to 'age in place' at home can help mitigate these challenges and alleviate the strain on health systems already operating at capacity in China [(10) p. 626 in (11)]. Utilising innovative digital technologies and smart homes can facilitate ageing-in-place in China. ...
Traditionally, China has been more reliant on a model of care that ensures older adults are cared for by family members. Whilst promoting the idea of older adults ageing in their own homes is essential, the provision of in-home care must shift from primarily relying on family caregivers to a model that places greater emphasis on gerontechnologies and enhanced healthcare service delivery. In this perspective article we argue for the adoption of a ‘smart home’ model in aged care in China. The smart home model argues for innovative technologies to older adult care, such as virtual support groups, video-conferencing, and electronic health records; assistive technologies that can safely maintain independence and assist with daily living such as sensors, wearables, telehealth, smart home technologies as well as interactive robotic technologies for mobility and cognitive support such as humanoid robots, rehabilitation robots, service/companion robots. The adoption and implementation of gerontechnologies have been slow, with only a handful of solutions demonstrating proven effectiveness in supporting home care. The utilisation of such digital technologies to support and enable older adults in China to age-in-place can bring a significant contribution to healthy ageing. Nonetheless, it’s crucial to focus on co-creating with end-users, incorporating their values and preferences, and enhancing training to boost the adoption of these gerontechnologies. Through a smart home model of care, China can age-in-place more effectively, leading to significant contributions to healthy ageing.
... A new and fast-growing category of coping solutions holds even greater promise for older persons seeking to age in place (Carnemolla, 2018;Kakulla, 2021). Labels refer to them as information and communication technologies, smart homes, the internet of things, telehealth, assistive technology, and pervasive computing technologies (Davenport et al., 2012;Ma et al., 2022). I refer to these options as gerontechnology solutions (Etkin, 2021). ...
ABSTRACT
Where older people live influences their ability to age successfully and enjoy healthy, independent, active, and happy lives. When they feel positive about their places of residence—and are in their residential comfort and mastery zones—they achieve residential normalcy. Then they view themselves as aging in the right places.
Gerontechnology devices or solutions, including telehealth, information and communication technologies, and robotic options, heighten the aging-in-place capabilities of older persons worldwide. So too, do the many new ways that older people are connected to their outside worlds, enabling them to have their essential goods and services delivered to their homes.
These solutions will increase the salience of the dwelling, as opposed to the neighborhood or community, as targets for intervention. The beneficiaries will be older people coping with their physical limitations and chronic health problems and those living alone combating social isolation and loneliness.
... They may feel even worse about themselves (Ang, 2022;Chopik, 2016). Losing their faculties while facing digital disparities, older adults found technology hard-hitting, causing frustration and helplessness, eventually culminating in depression (Ma et al., 2022;Zaman et al., 2022). ...
... The generational characteristics and similarities of the Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation were also brought to light, that social media has a role in helping older adults to stay connected with loved ones and feel better in senior living facilities (Morgan, 2021). For instance, advancements in technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR) have opened a new door for personalized care and camaraderie in the final moments of life, reducing death anxieties across generations (Ma et al., 2022;Morgan, 2021). The findings found that older adults who grew up with computers are more likely to embrace these technologies, while those who did not may be more cautious and hesitant to adopt them (Pirzada et al., 2022). ...
Objectives:
The onset of the digital age has sparked a significant age-related digital divide, detrimentally affecting older adults. The age-related digital disparities and the gray digital divide between the Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation in senior living facilities remains an exigent issue. This study explored the lived experiences of older adults as they confront the challenges posed by age-related digital disparities inherent in the gray digital divide in senior living facilities.
Methods:
In-depth, semi-structured interviews and observations were conducted with 28 older adults living in six senior living facilities in three urban locations. Moustakas's transcendental phenomenology was employed, and the Modified Stevick-Colaizzi-Keen method was used to analyze the data.
Results:
This study identified six main themes: barriers to connectivity, digital literacy, generational-rooted perceptions, navigating technology with functional limitations, social isolation, and end-of-life planning.
Conclusion:
The gray digital divide disproportionately affects older adults in senior living facilities. The study emphasizes the need for tailored interventions and targeted support to address the specific needs of each cohort and reduce age-related disparities. Addressing these disparities has significant implications for academics, policy-makers, senior living accommodations, and technology developers.
... In this context, there is a pressing need to seek innovative solutions to ensure quality aging and provide adequate care for an ever-increasing elderly population, with new technologies emerging as a promising tool to significantly improve this situation (Ma et al., 2022). The application of robotics in this context emerges as a highly relevant contribution, by virtue of its ability to operate in human-inhabited environments without requiring substantial modifications. ...
One of the major problems of today's society is the rapid aging of its population. Life expectancy is increasing, but the quality of life is not. Faced with the growing number of people who require cognitive or physical assistance, new technological tools are emerging to help them. In this article, we present the ADAM robot, a new robot designed for domestic physical assistance. It mainly consists of a mobile base, two arms with grippers and vision systems. All this allows the performance of physical tasks that require navigation and manipulation of the environment. Among ADAM's features are its modularity, its adaptability to indoor environments and its versatility to function as an experimental platform and for service applications. In addition, it is designed to work respecting the user's personal space and is collaborative, so it can learn from experiences taught by them. We present the design of the robot as well as examples of use in domestic environments both alone and in collaboration with other domestic platforms, demonstrating its potential.
... The concept in which technologies are designed and developed to enhance the safety, health, living environment social interaction of the elderly is referred as gero-technology. Smart innovative technologies comprise of a communication network connected to electrical appliances and services that can be controlled, accessed and monitored remotely (smart home technologies) and adapted to create a supportive environment for the elderly (Chabot et al., 2019;Chuan et al., 2022;Dupuy and Sauz eon, 2018;Labonnote and Høyland, 2017;Morris et al., 2014). Smart home technologies make it possible to monitor, control and support the elderly thereby enhancing the quality of life, promoting independent living (Marikyan et al., 2018) and, assist in energy planning (Wilson et al., 2017). ...
Purpose
The concept of aging-in-place has gained notable significance in the last decade due to a dramatic demographic shift in global population dynamics that have considerably affected the ability of societies to adequately cater for their aging population. This paper examines some of the barriers to aging-in-place in the context of health needs, housing design and the role of retrofitting/smart home technologies in overcoming these barriers.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a narrative literature review approach, the authors undertook a comprehensive search of recent relevant literature focusing on five core thematic areas: health and aging, aging in place, barriers to aging in place, retrofitting and smart home technologies for successful aging in place. The authors entered appropriate keywords into interdisciplinary research databases and synthesized a coherent narrative discussing the thematic areas using the data extracted from the literature search.
Findings
There is a bidirectional relationship between aging and the home environment. Barriers to aging-in-place are mainly related to progressive decline in health, which alters the environmental needs of individuals. Appropriate building designs can significantly facilitate aging-in-place. The authors, therefore, highlight the role of retrofitting and smart home technologies as practical solutions to the challenges of the aging-in-place.
Practical implications
Forward planning in building design is essential to guarantee that the home environment is well adapted for the challenges of aging-in-place while also promoting healthy aging.
Originality/value
The paper shows the relationship between aging and the home environment and how building design considerations could enhance healthy aging-in-place.
... La riqualificazione e la rifunzionalizzazione degli ambienti domestici finalizzato all'ageing in place dimostra che sia le modifiche ambientali e funzionali-spaziali che le smart technologies possono supportare la vita indipendente degli anziani, soprattutto per la prevenzione delle cadute e la qualità di piena fruizione degli ambienti domestici. All'interno di questi ultimi, infatti, si celano molti pericoli relativi al rischio caduta e, per tale motivo, risulta necessario adeguare la struttura abitativa e renderla sicura (Chuan et al., 2021). In letteratura si registrano molte sperimentazioni in merito all'applicazione di tecnologie intelligenti, come dimostra un recente studio (Tahir et al., 2022), che individua tre grandi categorie di dispositivi di rilevamento delle cadute: sensori indossabili, sensori basati sulla visione e dispositivi di rilevamento WiFi/Radar. ...
Back in 2002, the World Health Organization stated that "Population ageing is a triumph of humanity but also a challenge to society" and, recently in 2021, stated that "Our chances of being injured or dying as a result of a fall increase with age across the globe". These are worrying realities because falls are a growing and under-recognized public health issue. Indeed, the rise in the number of the elderly, coupled with a lack of suitable for existing houses, poses the dilemma of adequate housing provision that will allow the elderly to age in the right place, protecting their autonomy, independence and safety. Recently, SHAFE (Smart, Healthy, Age-Friendly Environments) has been proposed as a design approach to face the challenge of ageing. SHAFE model is focused on two goals: the promotion of smart and inclusive solutions to improve the independent life throughout the life course, regardless of age, gender, disabilities, cultural differences and personal choices; the optimization of social and physical environments, supported by digital tools and services. Based on a literature review, the paper discusses the contribution of environmental design for improving SHAFE environments fall-proofing and build living spaces really responding to the changing needs of people. As result, a general framework of environmental requirements for the design of SHAFE environments fall-proofing is presented, in which technological and functional-spatial aspects can support healthy ageing. Erminia Attaianese Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Dipartimento di Architettura. Professore associato di Tecnolo-gia dell'architettura. Docente di Ergonomia Applicata e User Centred Design, coordina le attività del Laboratorio di Ergonomia Applicata e Sperimentale (LEAS). L'attività di ricerca riguarda la progettazione human centred di ambienti, prodotti e sistemi; la progettazione ambientale per la sostenibilità, la sicurezza e la tutela della salute; la progettazione inclusiva e il Design for All; il progetto per l'usabilità e l'accessibilità di spazi, prodotti e servizi. Mariangela Perillo Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Dipartimento di Architettura. Architetto, PhD student in Tecnolo-gia dell'architettura presso il Dipartimento di Architettura dell'Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II.
... I NTERNET of Things (IoT) has attracted widespread attention in recent years because of rapid development [1]- [3]. As an important part of the IoT, the smart home provides users with information interaction functions such as living functions [4], network communication [5] and device automation [6] by connecting multiple devices in the environment together. Traditional IoT smart home applications rely heavily on devices such as cameras, wearable sensors and mobile phones [7]. ...
WiFi-based sensing technology has become a popular research direction in the Internet of Things (IoT) field. However, the accuracy of action sensing across different environmental domains is severely degraded when the model is deployed at the real IoT edge. Existing cross-domain sensing methods are unsuitable for real-life applications due to the large amount of expensive channel state information (CSI) data required for training. Meanwhile, pre-trained predictive models in the cloud may not perform well in edge-side deployment environments. To address these issues, we propose a few-shot cross-domain WiFi sensing (FewCS) system with online learning. The model aggregates unlabelled samples from the same target domain and separates samples from different domains while minimizing sample cost and training an accurate WiFi-sensing system. The core idea of FewCS is to capture the sensing features of data through intra-domain prototype clustering and perform cross-domain prototype extraction in a shared embedding space of multiple data. Moreover, we extend the model to the IoT edge segment for online learning and fine-tune the model parameters to fit the new domain on the cloud by using data collected in the field. Extensive experimental results on real datasets show that the proposed scheme significantly outperforms the current state-of-the-art WiFi sensing methods in terms of sensing accuracy and achieves satisfactory online learning performance with fewer training samples and times.
... In fact, the XR utilization via IoT platforms has been developed under the umbrella concept, "Smart Home" or "Smart Cities" to enhance the elderly's autonomy and independence in their lives (123,124). Unfortunately, current practices remain at retrofitting guidelines for general homes rather than being specified for living spaces with extensible technology adoption (125). On a somewhat related note, Interviewee I proposed, "Healthcare facilities need to involve tech experts who can suggest solutions to current procedures and practices that would save a lot of time and money, and greater awareness is needed to achieve this." ...
Objectives
This research focuses on how built environment experts can contribute to the MXR-enabled digital innovation as part of the multidisciplinary team effort to ensure post-pandemic resilience in healthcare built environment. The goal of this research is to help healthcare providers, built environment experts, and policy makers respectively: (1) Advocate the benefits of MXR for innovating health and social care; (2) Spark debate across networks of expertise to create health-promoting environment; and (3) Understand the overriding priorities in making effective pathways to the implementation of MXR.
Methods
To highlight the novelty of this research, the study relies on two qualitative methodologies: exploratory literature review and semi-structured interviews. Based on the evaluation of prior works and cross-national case studies, hypotheses are formulated from three arenas: (1) Cross-sectional Initiatives for Post-pandemic Resilience; (2) Interoperability and Usability of Next-gen Medicines; and (3) Metaverse and New Forms of Value in Future Healthcare Ecosystems. To verify those hypotheses, empirical findings are derived from in-depth interviews with nine key informants.
Results
The main findings are summarized under the following three themes: (1) Synergism between Architecture and Technology; (2) Patient Empowerment and Staff Support; and (3) Scalable Health and Wellbeing in Non-hospital and Therapeutic Settings. Firstly, both built environment and healthcare sectors can benefit from the various capabilities of MXR through cross-sectional initiatives, evidence-based practices, and participatory approaches. Secondly, a confluence of knowledge and methods of HCI and HBI can increase the interoperability and usability of MXR for the patient-centered and value-based healthcare models. Thirdly, the MXR-enabled technological regime will largely affect the new forms of value in healthcare premises by fostering more decentralized, preventive, and therapeutic characteristics in the future healthcare ecosystems.
Conclusion
Whether it's virtual or physical, our healthcare systems have placed great emphasis on the rigor of evidence-based approach linking health outcome to a clinical environment. Henceforth, built environment experts should seek closer ties with the MXR ecosystems for the co-production of scalable health and wellbeing in non-hospital and therapeutic settings. Ultimately, this is to improve resource efficiency in the healthcare sector while considering the transition of health resources towards in silico status by increasing the implementation of MXR.
... Using sensors and data-driven technology, smart homes detect human activity and modify some aspects of the environment accordingly. However, these devices do not eliminate the need for PrOE, but rather increase it, since not only the environment itself must be assessed, but also the compatibility of the technology used with people and building structures [47]. ...
Building Information Modeling (BIM) is a powerful process for creating and managing data throughout the life cycle of a building. Traditionally, measuring the well-being of building occupants has been addressed solely through objective physical variables such as temperature or relative air humidity. However, recent studies indicate that the built environment influences subjective aspects of human well-being. This article presents a scoping review to find information related to the use of BIM in the assessment of the mental and emotional state of inhabitants. A scoping review has been undertaken following the PRISMA-ScR guidelines by searching in Scopus, ACM, IEEE Xplore and PsycINFO databases. Fourteen articles meeting the inclusion criteria were found after the screening process, all of them published in the last decade, twelve in the last five years. Two ways of using BIM have been identified in relation to the subject matter of this review: (i) for visualization and monitoring of occupant well-being and (ii) for showing building design alternatives to future occupants. The included papers show that BIM has potential for assessing the mental and emotional state of building occupants. However, the results of these studies are still limited and much research in this area remains pending.
