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Assessing Professional Caregiver Needs in Assistive Smart Homes

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Handbook of Smart Homes, Health Care and Well-Being

Abstract

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.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA

    A. Leah Zulas

  2. School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA

    Aaron S. Crandall

Authors
  1. A. Leah Zulas
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  2. Aaron S. Crandall
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Correspondence to A. Leah Zulas .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Fontys University of Applied Sciences, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Joost van Hoof

  2. School of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA

    George Demiris

  3. Fontys University of Applied Sciences, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Eveline J.M. Wouters

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© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland (outside the USA)

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Zulas, A.L., Crandall, A.S. (2014). Assessing Professional Caregiver Needs in Assistive Smart Homes. In: van Hoof, J., Demiris, G., Wouters, E. (eds) Handbook of Smart Homes, Health Care and Well-Being. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01904-8_14-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01904-8_14-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-01904-8

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