Towards personalised home care systems

ABSTRACT

Home care is increasingly seen as a promising alternative to traditional care services. Programming home care systems remains a significant challenge considering the potentially large scale of deployment, the differences between individual care needs, and the progressive nature of ageing. In this paper, we present ongoing work on programming home care systems to support personalisation, adaptability over time, and dependability. A policy-based approach is used to build such systems. We present the technical details of our approach, including a policy language for home care and the corresponding system architecture. Policy examples are used to illustrate how the approach supports personalisation of home care services.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.1 PROGRAMMING TECHNIQUES

Additional Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.4 Distributed Systems

General Terms:
Design, Management

Keywords:
home care, personalisation, pervasive computing, policy-based management