Now there is the choice for older and disabled people to remain at home... And be happy!
Disabled and older people are constantly faced with the choice of remaining at home with a care package to meet their needs or being institutionalised. Recent UK Government policies have started a U-turn on this strategy favouring the former to the latter. Care providers are increasingly facing the requirement of finding extra resources to comply with the relocation of people who have previously been in institutional care. Although funding is available to meet demand, this is not without constraints and consequently care providers are forced to do a miracle job with limited finance.
There is considerable evidence that people with disabilities and older people would rather stay in their own home than enter institutions, and in some cases, such as dementia, it is even essential that the person is in familiar surroundings. One response from care providers is the use of assistive technology (AT). AT consists of the use of devices to aid people in their daily lives and span the spectrum from the provision of walking stick and bath aids to full electronic devices to open doors and windows. The electronic devices are often high cost items that significantly increase the quality of life to people with severe conditions. The problem that is associated with this technology is that it is often provided in a piecemeal fashion and the individual is left with a number of different remote controls and a number of devices that are separated from each other. The technology is available to wire a house so that the devices in the home can monitor each other by sending messages in a two way dialogue. This type of system requires a bus-line, which is a small cable that is complementary to the existing mains cable and carries the signals to and from the devices that are installed.
There are a number of protocols and manufacturers that provide bus-line technology and a number of different systems providers (such as CEBus, BatiBus, European Home System (EHS), European Installation Bus (EIB), Echelon/Lonworks etc). A major feature of this technology is that the bus line acts as the safety valve for the system. Most unidirectional AT devices can fail and when they do so the only way of determining this is when they appear to have stopped working. Often people are reliant on computers to provide them with the necessary information to work correctly, so if the computer crashes, so does the system. For disabled and older people, AT becomes integrated into the rhythms of their daily lives. An AT device becomes as important for the person as the telephone or television is to others. To find that it is not working can cause the person to feel insecure or unable to undertake simple daily tasks. The technology becomes their lifeline and as such, it must be reliable.
Currently, AT is accepted by many care providers, but there is still a lack of knowledge, understanding and acceptance of how smart home technology can be provided using the bus-line. Researchers in the field have determined that this form of AT is most appropriate for people with disabilities and older people. They have outlined that the benefits are considerable for the older person and person with disabilities, yet the constant stumbling block that they are presented with is the economic argument. There is little doubt that economically, a bus-line is more expensive to install that a cheaper DIY alternative. But this is an initial outlay, which should be recuperated over a number of years, when the cheaper devices will have had to have been replaced. The other expense is the necessity to obtain highly skilled individuals who are conversant with the technology to design the system for the individual so that their needs are met. This might involve a number of visits and be very costly. Often, large organisations will not be willing to undertake this form of design as it would cost them more for the consultations than they would make from the installation. Certainly, costs can be saved by installing the cable into new-built houses, as retrofitting (putting the bus-line into an existing house) can be costly. Even retrofitting can be cost effective if this means that a person can remain in their home for a longer period and have a better quality of life in the process.
A
site in Aberdeen UK designed for adults with severe autistic
spectrum difficulties, this picture is courtesy of Halliday
Fraser Munro Architects, Aberdeen. This service was finally
completed and opened in August 2004. Technology specification
courtesy of SMART Thinking, Goldshield Electronic Security,
Sergeant Consultancy and Aberdeen City Council Housing
Department (see Projects for more info as well as this
page and this presentation) or read the exclusive (tongue
in cheek) position paper. This paper adds context to the
notion that there are such things as "smart" homes.
The paper suggests that intelligence and smartness is considering
technology from the position of the technology, people
are absent from this view. Moreover the types of technology
system that we consider dependable is one which follows
the old the HCI motto "less is more". Good systems
are not smart, they are just used!! When you use the phone
do you consider how clever it is? what about the television?
So why do you need to consider this for Assistive Technology
in the home?
Through the work of the EQUATOR (www.equator.ac.uk)and DIRC (www.dirc.org.uk) Projects, we are looking at the role of AT in the home and considering aspects of its dependability and acceptability. We realise that devices have to work first time all the time, when they are supposed to work, but we are also looking at what makes AT acceptable, such that people will continuing using it. As a consequence we have developed the interdependent model of acceptable AT design which can be read about in the articles sections. You will also find other articles looking in more depth about the issues of dependability and how this concept can be used to reframe in the analysis of the home. There are also articles on ubiquitous technology in the home and the issues relating this this deployment.
See the design section as well as the dependability pages.
For more information on this project see the pdf from a presentation I made at Durham in 2005.
Also see some other good practice from the TATE project
