Older Adults’ Attitudes to Self-Management of Health and Wellness through Smart Home Data

Abstract

Smart homes have significant potential to enhance the lives of older adults, extending the period of healthy ageing, through monitoring wellbeing, detecting decline and applying interventions to prevent or slow down this decline. In this paper we present results from interviews with 7 older adults who have been living in smart homes for over 4 years. Our aims were to 1) examine attitudes to living with sensors and AAL technology over time; 2) gather opinions on the usefulness of this data for supporting self-management of health and wellbeing and 3) evaluate the effectiveness of various visualization techniques for presenting sensor-based health and wellness data. Our findings show that older adults are interested in receiving feedback from sensor technology to support them self-managing their wellbeing. Potential beneficial information includes time spent inside and outside the home, walking time, sleep, activity, blood pressure and weight. This information needs to be enhanced by education and goal-setting and by representing data using visualisations that are simple and intuitive.