A remote home monitoring system to support informal caregivers of people with dementia

Informal caregivers of people with dementia have a high risk of becoming overburdened. Health informatics for aging in place can provide them support by deploying unobtrusive remote home monitoring systems to assess real-time events and monitor changes in the behavior of the person with dementia (PwD). In this paper, we describe the concept, development, and evaluation of an intelligent remote Home Monitoring System (HMS) that provides support to informal caregivers by giving key information related to the health and independent living of the PwD. The HMS consists of a Sensor System that monitors low-level behaviors of the PwD, a Decision Support System that translates this into high-level behaviors, and a connected Smartphone Application that allows the caregiver to receive notifications, review behavioral information at a glance, and facilitates the collaborative care process between informal caregivers. The final HMS prototype was evaluated and scored high in terms of usa bility and quality of the Smartphone Application. The Sensor System showed no significant flaws during testing, and the Decision Support System is considered a viable proof of concept. The next step is to evaluate the HMS in a real-life setting in terms of offering peace of mind and reducing the burden of care.