Research Article
OCareClouds: improving home care by interconnecting elderly, care networks and their living environments
@INPROCEEDINGS{10.4108/icst.pervasivehealth.2014.255399, author={Floris Van den Abeele and Jeroen Hoebeke and Femke De Backere and Femke Ongenae and Pieter Bonte and Stijn Verstichel and Tommy Carlier and Pieter Crombez and Kevin De Gryse and Stefan Danschotter and Ingrid Moerman and Filip De Turck}, title={OCareClouds: improving home care by interconnecting elderly, care networks and their living environments}, proceedings={8th International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare}, publisher={ICST}, proceedings_a={PERVASIVEHEALTH}, year={2014}, month={7}, keywords={aal ecare sensors ontologies}, doi={10.4108/icst.pervasivehealth.2014.255399} }- Floris Van den Abeele
Jeroen Hoebeke
Femke De Backere
Femke Ongenae
Pieter Bonte
Stijn Verstichel
Tommy Carlier
Pieter Crombez
Kevin De Gryse
Stefan Danschotter
Ingrid Moerman
Filip De Turck
Year: 2014
OCareClouds: improving home care by interconnecting elderly, care networks and their living environments
PERVASIVEHEALTH
ACM
DOI: 10.4108/icst.pervasivehealth.2014.255399
Abstract
In order to reduce costs related to an aging population, health care will increasingly rely on in-home care as an alternative to admission in a medical facility. Even when hospitalization is necessary, it should be feasible to discharge elderly patients sooner and instead rely on in-home care that is on par with in-hospital care. Today however, there are many obstacles that remain open for delivering high-quality care at home. For one thing, environments to which discharged patients return are often not adapted to the patient's speci c health care needs. For another, organizing in-home care with a large number of caregivers is often costly and cumbersome. Therefor, this paper presents OCareCloudS: a computer system that aims to improve in-home care by combining information pertaining to the care and the home environment of a patient with information relating to their network of caregivers. By means of a portable miniature home, this paper demonstrates how the interconnection of these three elements combined with ontology-based reasoning can improve the in-home health care in case of a patient with a physical disability.