Standards Development

Scope

This document deals with devices, data and services related to the AAL users under connected home environment; it identifies the characteristics of each age group, designs the appropriate requirements based on age group’s needs, and specifies the applicable service layers across different age groups.

AAL user, active assisted living user defined as person who uses or benefits from, or uses and benefits from, AAL devices, systems or services.

Purpose

-The definition of connected home can be stated that a connected home is networked to ensure the interconnection and interoperability of multiple devices, services and apps for various purposes. For example, connected home can be used for entertainment, healthcare and security. Hence, as the benefits of connected home are numerous in terms of daily life management, those technologies and services based on ICT need to be thoughtfully considered in a way that any age group including elderly as AAL users can maintain the independent life autonomously. Surely, there are already diverse connected home related products on the market. Accordingly, we seek to suggest the possible consideration for designing the services targeted for a particualr age group by examining varying requirements of different age groups and pointing out several service layers which AAL users can utilize for various purposes.

-Aging is the comprehensive process which includes physical, psychological and social factors; and all these relevant factors are interdependent. This indicates that physical changes are affecting the social behaviors while social behaviors influence the physical conditions simultaneously. As we can define the elderly or seniors with the following definition, dominant characteristics could be classified into three aspects which are physical, social and mental dimension. It is the worldwide trend that the life expectancy of mankind has been rapidly increasing due to the medical development and improvement of living environment, making the society and economy as elderly focused. Already, many major countries are establishing the solution for elderly issue and actively pursuing the relevant policy on elderly’s disease prevention or treatment. All of these actions can be seen as an attempt to deal with the super-aged society in which those over 65 years consisted more than 21% out of total population. According to various global reports from many countries, it is apparently evident that current status of ageing is similar across the continent with the increasing number of aged population. Thus, the relevant policy from each country has been developed and implemented in order to address the issue of elderly ranging from social welfare to silver economy.

-Based on the fact that aging is the representation of various factors such as social, economical and environemntal effect, the design of AAL services need to take the life course perspective into account. In order to accomplish this purpose, there will be TWO parts related with the deisgn considerations with (a) requirements of each age group and (b) possible application domains.