Page - 296 - in Intelligent Environments 2019 - Workshop Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Intelligent Environments

WelfareTechnology,Healthcare, and BehaviourModelling- nAnalysis VeraliaGabrielaSANCHEZa,1 aDepartmentofElectricalEngineering, InformationTechnologyandCybernetics, UniversityofSouth-EasternNorway (USN),Norway Abstract.Welfare technology is a growing area of research due to the increase in the ageing population. In Nordic countries, public authorities are the primary healthcareproviders.Therefore, there issignificantof investment tohelpolderpeo- ple to live as long as they wish at their own home. At the University of South- EasternNorway,acurrentprojectonwelfare technologyisbeingdevelopedfor this purpose,with a focus onhumanbehaviourmodelling.Through the research, gaps were foundbetween the technology and the healthcare aspect of it. Consequently, difficulties for the consumer (theolder people) arise.This article presents ananal- ysisofconnectionandgapsbetween technologyand thehealthcareareaofwelfare technology for theageing. Keywords. ambient assisted living, smart house, ageing in place, intelligent environment,Norway, assistive technology 1. Introduction Welfare technology forolderpeoplehasdramaticallygrown in theNordiccountries [1]. The reason for this interest is due to the increase in the ageing population, not only in Nordic countriesbut also inEuropeanUnion (EU)member states,EuropeanFreeTrade Associationcountries(EFTA:Iceland,Liechtenstein,Norway,andSwitzerland),andcan- didate countries (Albania, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, SerbiaandTurkey) [2]. InNorway, asof2019, life expectancy increased forbothmenandwomen. Inaddi- tion, 38% (one infive persons) of households are composed of people living alone.By 2060, 20%of theNorwegian populationwill be 70 and older compared to the current 11%[3]. Fig 1 shows thepopulationprojection forNorway.Similarly, in theEU, those aged80andoverwill almost double from5.5%to12.7%between2017and2080 [2]. Figure2shows thepopulationprojection for theEuropeanUnion. Acommonapproach tohelpolder people to stay at home for as longaspossible is smart houses, sometimes referred to as ambient assisting living. The general aim is to assist theolderperson incaseofneed,whileother studies focusmainlyonfalldetection [4–7]. 1Corresponding Author: Veralia Gabriela Sa´nchez, Department of Electrical Engineering, Information Technology and Cybernetics, University of South-Eastern Norway (USN), Norway; E-mail: veralia.g.sanchez,@usn.no A Intelligent Environments 2019 A. Muñoz et al. (Eds.) © 2019 The authors and IOS Press. This article is published online with Open Access by IOS Press and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0). doi:10.3233/AISE190057 296