Assessing Professional Caregiver Needs in Assistive Smart Homes

With the elderly population on the rise, assistive smart technology is positioned to help the elderly living community take on the upcoming age wave. The promise of this technology is focused on providing high-quality data to caregivers. While the research community has published many successes gathering and modeling medical data, there is little work on how to effectively deliver data to caregivers. This study attempts to inform researchers and engineers building smart technologies how to better understand the needs of nurses assisting the elderly. Interviews suggest nutrition, sleep length and quality, cleanliness of the individual, safety, and elopement by cognitively impaired individuals are of central concern. It is also important for programmers to make graphs and charts with axis have a real-world relationship. Sensor “events” are not relevant to nursing staff, and should not be presented in their raw form. Time increments are more appropriate for this population than quantity of sensor events. During the design of user-facing tools, a little extra care to the needs of caregivers can ensure assistive smart homes are helpful technologies.