IoT and smart city services to support independence and wellbeing of older people

Abstract

Over the next 20 years there will be demographic shift from predominantly younger populations to older ones. Current models of care and pathways require transforming to become more citizen focused and support greater community resilience and sustainability. This will require different approaches to innovation to improve quality of life for people as they age, reduce onset of frailty as well as support those better with long term conditions around self-management and prevention strategies. Health and social care providers are looking at how they augment traditional clinical health related services with the use of IoT technologies and smart city services. This paper describes the on-going work of the Birmingham City4Age pilot, managed by the local authority, Birmingham City Council and funded by the Horizon 2020 Programme of the European Commission focused on the unobtrusive collection of data via wearable devices, outdoor sensors and other smart city systems that aims to help reduce the onset of frailty of older people. Locality and contextual data is being captured on individuals' behaviours with increased frequency that aims to help in detecting early changes in daily living — physical activity and social patterns and develop technology based interventions to help reduce the risk of frailty. The proposed systems architecture is being validated in two distinct neighbourhoods with contrasting demographics in Birmingham, UK adopting an iterative user design approach designed to support independence.