Elderly Healthcare Data Protection Application for Ambient Assisted Living

Abstract

The increasing aging of the population requires new kinds of social and medical intervention and the availability of different supportive services for elderly people. Falling is one of the events that usually occur to elderly persons with resultant morbidity ranging from soft injury through to fractures and possibly death. Due the fragility of the elderly persons, falls should be avoided at all costs. New applications and services have been developed allowing the elderly people to be continuously monitored, however an adequate response to the needs of the users will imply a high percentage of use for personal data and information. This article introduces the data protection rules that have to be considered in elderly healthcare facilities for protecting residents' privacy and sensible data that is being shared between persons and applications. Also, this article proposes an automatic video surveillance system for elderly protection via falls detection and prevention. The proposed system utilized the integration of motion detection sensors embedded in network cameras with smart mobile phones in order to develop a platform for pervasive fall detection and prevention. Moreover, the proposed system highlights the consideration of balance between the rights and legitimate concerns of elderly residents and the requirements of an efficient functioning in the healthcare facility. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013.