Clinical Research Directory

City For All Ages: Elderly-friendly City Services for Active and Healthy Ageing

Many city-dwelling elderly people can be greatly affected after a minor change in their living or health conditions. Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), early dementia and frailty are among the most common risks with deep consequences on elderly's and caregivers' quality of life. Through the new wave of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), Internet of Things (IoT) and smart city system, it is now possible to help individuals capture and make use of their personal data in a way that will help them maintain their independence for longer. The City for all Ages project will create an innovative service based on: * ICT-enhanced early detection of risk related to frailty * ICT-enhanced interventions that can help the elderly population to improve their daily life and also promote positive behaviour change Through real-life pilot sites in Singapore in collaboration with TOUCH Senior Activity Centre (SAC) and the Housing Development Board (HDB), this project explores how data on individual behaviours captured through indoor and outdoor sensors could be used for the observation and detection of the following parameters: * Activity of Daily Living (ADL): nutrition, hygiene, sleep activity * Mobility: physical activity, going-out frequency and length * Cognition: forgetfulness, early signs of mental decline * Socialization: senior activity centre visits, activities attended, other places of interests visits This 2-year project comprises of 3 phrases involving 10 healthy elderly living in HDB home in phases 1 and 2 and 100 elderly in phase 3. Our focus is to use sensing technologies installed in the elderly's home to monitor and detect their activities of daily living. Sensor data that is collected will then be analyzed to identify relevant behaviours of individuals, and to detect behavioral changes that can be correlated with risks of MCI/frailty. The appropriate ICT based interventions (e.g. data visualization and alerts to caregivers) will then be applied to mitigate these risks. Additionally, psychosocial data related to the elderly's quality of life, social activity participation and activities of daily living will also be collected via interviews and activity logs to evaluate the outcomes of our technology intervention.