In the project ‘Zorgen voor morgen‘ (Taking care of tomorrow), ICT innovations in caregiving are studied. The Hogeschool and University of Amsterdam studied activity monitoring of elderly using sensor networks. We mounted simple sensors in 6 assisted living apartments in Naarderheem. The activities of the inhabitants are automatically recognized with a Hidden Markov model. We compare the performance of the system with the ADL scores of a professional occupational therapist.We presented the system at the closing conference of the project.
In the project we also carried out user studies to investigate the needs and requirements by the end users; both inhabitants and caregivers. A novel methodology was developed by Marije Kanis in the form of a tangible maquette of the elderly home, equipped with sensors. Using this maquette the (future) users of the system could express their ideas about what sort of activities were relevant to be measured, and which persons (caregivers, family, ..) were allowed to see the information.