Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
functionalities
. AAL is defined very extensively
and embraces assistive systems as well as business
processes and health care processes. In the past
years various AAL projects were incorporated,
in most cases funded by public means, to tackle
the increasing costs for health care and nursing
caused by the superannuation of the popula-
tion. Besides, population ageing and the caused
problems mentioned in the section Eldercare, the
increasing number of single households and an
increased demand for assistive technologies are
drivers for AAL technologies.
AAL technologies can be categorized into
indoor
assistance technologies and
outdoor
as-
sistance technologies, which have to provide
services for (
i)
emergency treatment, (
ii)
autonomy
enhancement, and (
iii)
comfort (Nehmer, Becker,
Karshmer, & Lamm, 2006). A typical emergency
treatment service is fall detection, which may be
provided for indoors as well as for outdoors. An
example for an autonomy enhancement service is
a service for remote blood pressure monitoring.
This service is usually applied indoors and avoids
regular traveling to the patient's doctor, and there-
fore enhances the autonomy of the inhabitant. A
typical comfort service is the automatic control
of the lighting, to properly illuminate the living
spots in the household. It is obvious, that indoor
and outdoor assistance usually provide different
services, which must be appropriately designed.
Apart from technical and scientific issues, the
design has to consider care and business-related
aspects properly. Otherwise such systems will
fail in real life.
connection of patients, caregivers and health care
providers which improves the quality of life for
elderly and additionally decreases efforts and cost
for nursing and healthcare.
Interoperability and data integration are issues
for healthcare services, especially when vital sign
monitoring (blood pressure, blood sugar and pulse
rate) is concerned. These data might be needed by
different AAL applications, eHealth services or
healthcare providers and can be sent to a healthcare
documentation system, where nursery personnel
assess the recorded data. A doctor, for example,
can define critical ranges for these values and
a smart reasoning system using inference can
conclude when these values get toward the de-
fined critical ones. Then the system may suggest
counter measures, like doing exercises or inform
the healthcare or nursing personnel in advance.
To achieve interoperability and ease data in-
tegration, current and future technologies have to
follow standards. Two important initiatives that
suggest standards which should be used within the
healthcare and AAL domain, are
(ii)
the
Continua
Health Alliance
(Continua Health Alliance, 2010),
and
(ii) Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise
(IHE) (IHE International, 2010). Continua Health
Alliance (Continua) is a collaboration of healthcare
and technology companies to improve the qual-
ity of personal healthcare.
IHE
is a worldwide
initiative of industrialists, healthcare enterprises
and professionals to improve interoperability and
information exchange between healthcare facili-
ties and other healthcare service providers using
electronic healthcare information systems.
IHE as well as Continua promote the in-
tegration of established standards to achieve
standardized communication. Two of the most
important standards for IHE are Digital Imaging
and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) and
Health Level Seven (HL7). DICOM is a standard
for handling, storing, printing, and transmitting
information in medical imaging (National Electri-
cal Manufacturers Association, 2010). HL7 is a
standard for the exchange, integration, sharing,
Interoperability and Data Integration
Concerning eHealth and AAL
The wide range of external devices, which can be
used for patient and healthcare monitoring, and
the exchange of data among different healthcare
providers increase the importance of interoper-
ability. Interoperability between different AAL
applications and healthcare systems enables the
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