Expert Views
Technology to support caregivers
Viktor Grinewitschus leads a group of scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronics Circuits and Systems (IMS) in Duisburg, Germany. As one of the initiators of the inHaus Innovation Centre, he coordinates the development activities between the Fraunhofer Institutes and the inHaus partners. He is also a member of various committees that focus on the “Intelligent Home”.
The aging society is leading to important challenges for public health systems and caregivers in Germany as in the rest of Europe. The rising cost of care and health services that are caused by demographic changes is facing budgetary constraints. Moreover, the lack of qualified care personnel is resulting in additional problems. These issues are leading to discussions on how to address these problems.
“As any rapid changes in demographic trends are unlikely, and solutions
such as increasing the budget devoted to healthcare services are not feasible,
we need new approaches and creative solutions,” says Viktor Grinewitschus.
To support the development of such solutions, the Fraunhofer Institute is extending
their existing inHaus Innovation Centre with a new 5000-square-metre building
(inHaus2). It will contain the following system laboratories: Care Lab; Hospital
Lab; Hotel Lab; Office Lab; Facility Management Lab; and Service Labs.
“In these laboratories complete scenarios of specific application areas will be set up. Together with partners from industry and operating companies, these scenarios will be evaluated to discover how processes can be improved by applying interdisciplinary approaches and/or new technologies,” explains Grinewitschus.
Care Lab
The aim of the Care Lab is to develop so-called assistive environments to allow people to live independently as long as possible in their own home.
“We want to support people who are providing care to their relatives with communication tools such as telemedicine systems that allow them to request help as quickly as possible. We also want to support professional caregivers in ambulant or stationary settings to streamline routine jobs like documentation.”
To set up an assistive environment, domotic control, domestic appliances and additional sensors and actuators embedded in a dwelling will be linked together and information available in the components will be analysed to recognise requests for assistance.
In the area of healthcare IT, systems will be put in place that record a person’s vital functions throughout the day through wearable pressure sensors, and at night via a mattress embedded with sensors. Also implemented is medicine packaging equipped with smart labels (RFID tags), and a medicine cabinet equipped with an RFID reader. The information can be transmitted via a teleservice platform and caregivers alerted in case of an emergency.
Components can also be automatically controlled by the system, such as switching off the cooker if the inhabitant forgets to do so, or automatically controlling room lighting to prevent a person falling in the dark. The collected information also provides useful information on the inhabitant’s status. For example, unusual situations like “person is at home but no interactions with devices or events from movement detectors are recognised” will generate a message that is sent to the relatives or the caregiver.
“In workshops held with professional caregivers, different approaches to improve the support were identified,” says Grinewitschus. “The major request that came from caregivers was for better monitoring of clients to recognise their need for help – especially at night – and to assist their documentation tasks. In the inHaus2 Care Lab, solutions for these specific requests will be developed and tested in practice.”
Hospital Lab
The aim of the Hospital Lab is to set up an environment that can be used for evaluation of how information technology or innovative logistics concepts for buildings can improve the building’s performance. To this end, it is planned to integrate a complete hospital surgery into the Hospital Lab. It will also cover research that focuses on optimising the organisation of a medical support centre.
The inHaus-2 Lab is under construction, with the opening planned for September 2008.
More information: www.inhaus.de