Digital Avatars for Older People’s Care

Abstract

The continuous increase in life expectancy poses a challenge for health systems in modern societies, especially with respect to older people living in rural low-populated areas, both in terms of isolation and difficulty to access and communicate with health services. In this paper, we address these issues by applying the Digital Avatars framework to Gerontechnology. Building on our previous work on mobile and social computing, in particular the People as a Service model, Digital Avatars make intensive use of the capabilities of current smartphones to collect information about their owners, and applies techniques of Complex Event Processing extended with uncertainty for inferring the habits and preferences of the user of the phone and building with them a virtual profile. These virtual profiles allow to monitor the well-being and quality of life of older adults, reminding pharmacological treatments and home health testings, and raising alerts when an anomalous situation is detected.