Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
dards promoted by IHE, like
Health Level Seven
(HL7) (Health Level Seven, 2010), guarantee the
definition of efficient and effective models. The
model-based approach offers several advantages.
It facilitates document sharing among different
health care enterprises, reduces redundant data
acquisition and improves the necessary commu-
nication for nursing care.
In this chapter an overview about healthcare
and related standards, AAL and related state of the
art is given and approaches for data integration
are discussed. Best practice projects, which deal
with patient-oriented care information, AAL as
well as ambient intelligence are presented.
provides those necessary standards which can
be considered as such glue that facilitates the
interaction between concepts and technologies as
shown in Figure 1.
Eldercare
The global population faces a rapid demographic
change. Countries in the European Union will be
especially affected by population aging (Tivig,
Frosch, & Kühntopf, Mapping Regional De-
mographic Change and Regional Demographic
Location Risk in Europe. Final Report, 2008).
There are three main causes of population aging:
(ii)
fertility below replacement levels,
(ii)
a fall in
mortality, and
(iii)
the approach of baby-boomers
to retirement age. This leads to demographic and
cultural challenges for Europe (Kuhn, 2006). How-
ever, aging is not only framed as a challenge. The
World Health Organization (WHO) views aging
as a success story enabled by medical advances
but also as a potentially missed opportunity. For
the WHO, there are three ways to overcome this
situation (Beard, Global Lessons on Building
Livable Communities for the Future, 2010):
(ii)
health promotion throughout life,
(ii)
access to
age-friendly primary care and long-term care,
and
(iii)
the creation of environments that foster
elder care.
While the working age population (15 - 64
years) will decrease, the population affected by
aging will constantly increase in the coming years
(Santer & Bullot, Demographic Change - An
Unavoidable Challenge Looming, 2009). This
raises a major question: How can care be delivered
to a growing number of elderly with shrinking
resources available to health service providers?
OVERVIEW: RELATED
TECHNOLOGIES AND CONCEPTS
In the following section we discuss several im-
portant technologies and concepts which are the
basis for current technological achievements in
the context of AAL and
Ambient Intelligence
Data Integration.
AAL is an interdisciplinary
field which concerns multiple areas and applies
concepts from different domains. Therefore, we
will cover only the most related domains like
healthcare, eHealth (as sub domain of healthcare)
and eldercare. Furthermore this chapter focuses
on new software-technology concepts and tools,
since their application has emphasized further
achievements in these domains. The selected
concepts and technologies from the area of
Wire-
less Sensor Networks
(WSN), smart home and
ambient intelligence will be furthermore discussed
in more detail. There are further related concepts
and technologies, but to explain all of them would
break the mold of this chapter. The mentioned
concepts and technologies can be applied for dif-
ferent domains, but to enable a domain spanning
approach related to AAL some glue is needed. This
glue must facilitate the communication among
the applied concepts and used technologies. IHE
Healthcare
Healthcare institutions have to cope with differ-
ent issues, such as:
(ii)
providing efficiency and
economic sustainability, or
(ii)
easy access to
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