Ambient intelligence technologies are a means to support ageing-in-place by monitoring clients in the home. In this study, monitoring is applied for the purpose of raising an alarm in an emergency situation, and thereby, providing an increased sense of safety and security. Apart from these technological solutions, there are numerous environmental interventions in the home environment that can support people to age-in-place. The aim of this study was to investigate the needs and motives, related to ageing-in-place, of the respondents receiving ambient intelligence technologies, and to investigate whether, and how, these technologies contributed to aspects of ageing-in-place. This paper presents the results of a qualitative study comprised of interviews and observations of technology and environmental interventions in the home environment among 18 community-dwelling older adults with a complex demand for care.
Discussions about the importance of the built environment for healthcare delivery extend at least as far back as Hippocrates 1 (400 BC). The iconic Florence Nightingale (1859) also strongly believed in the influence the indoor environment has on the progress of disease and recovery. Today, the role of the built environment in the healing process is of growing interest to healthcare providers, environmental psychologists, consultants, and architects. Although there is a mounting evidence 1 linking healthcare environments to health outcomes, because of the varying quality of that evidence, there has also been a lack of clarity around what can and cannot be achieved through design. Given the ageing of society and the ever increasing numbers of persons with dementia in the Western World, the need for detailed knowledge about aged care environments has also become increasingly important. The mental and physical health state of these persons is extremely fragile and their needs demand careful consideration. Although environmental interventions constitute only a fraction of what is needed for people with dementia to remain as independent as possible, there is now sufficient evidence (2, 3) to argue they can be used as a first-line treatment, rather than beginning with farmalogical interventions.
What about people, hardware (biology) and software (culture)? Our construction starts with an egg cell and a sperm cell that is 83,000 times smaller (in this phase the female is certainly cooperative). The 2 cells double, and double, 47 times (247) resulting in the 140.737 billion (1.4 * 1014) complex collaborating cells! Every day millions of cells die and the same number is re-formed. Usually we notice nothing of this "maintenance" (sometimes a cold, sometimes worse). In time, for example, we get hungry and then we become saturated, or there is a sense of movement. All essential nutrients and processes are thus guaranteed. Our body never gets older than 10 years! In the colomn it is argued that we exist in interaction rather than in content.
MULTIFILE
