Table of Contents
- Modularity – because dementia is not a static condition, SH should adapt to the evolution of user specifications and needs. The system should hence be modular and context-aware to allow the adding or removing of components and features without significant changes. The modularity would thus make sure that the system respects the user’s learning curve.
- Invisibility – having unfamiliar devices (sensors, …) at home can be a source of anxiety for a person with dementia. Hence Smart Home’s devices should be as much as possible transparent to the user. Moreover, the system should be installed on familiar devices. For instance, communications with the user would use TVs or radios as a medium. Healthcare professionals and caregivers do actually stress the fact that persons with dementia need to keep a sense of control over their living environment and this goes with having the most transparent Smart Home’s devices.
- Distribution – having a reliable system is crucial in the case of a Smart Home for persons with dementia. In fact, any failure in the system can be harmful to the user. Thus, rather than using a main computing unit that is taking care of all the processing load, the system should be designed in a way that allows distribution of the load across all the units. There are various distributed design methods that allow this. One is called The Mobile Agent and uses a blend of computer software and data communication techniques to enable software components (agents) to migrate between the host computers in a network. This way, any task can be done regardless of the unit they are running on.
- Data privacy – because the Smart Home environment would deal with healthcare, passively monitor patients on a regular basis and have access to detailed personal information, data transfers over the Cloud must be anonymized and protected following high standards. Besides, multiple parties would have access to the data, from healthcare providers (doctors, nurses) to families. Hence, several levels of authorizations could be put in place allowing diverse party to only access relevant information. This would prevent wide spread of confidential data.