4Life | Smartwatch Solution for Elderly Care
By Bella Cooper, Daithy Ren, Jonathan Desta, Hinal Patel
Problem and solution overview
Caring for the elderly within their own homes is a nuanced and demanding role, requiring oversight and coordination. This role includes the need for persistent health monitoring and the careful management of intricate medication and clinical schedules. Both professional and family caregivers bear the responsibility of safeguarding the health and well-being of seniors, which calls for a method that combines thorough supervision with the promotion of the seniors’ independence. Our solution introduces an innovative voice control smartwatch system tailored to cope with the complexities of caregiving. It equips caregivers with instantaneous data and notifications, enabling swift action if health concerns arise on the elderly people end’s or if there are changes in the care schedule. In parallel, it upholds the autonomy of elderly individuals by providing an accessible interface to help them navigate their daily healthcare activities with voice control and keeps track of the essential health vitals 24/7. This advanced wearable technology aspires to deliver reassurance to caregivers and uphold the seniors’ self-respect, ensuring a care setting that is both effective and empathetic.
Design Research Goals, Stakeholders, and Participants
In our research we aimed at improving the well-being of elderly adults and their caretakers. Figure 1 illustrates a caretaker helping a elderly person with his medicine, showing our potential stakeholders and their roles. We utilized two design research methods, interviews and surveys. In our interviews, we engaged with four participants each with unique caregiving backgrounds. These participants consisted of an elder facing language barriers and health challenges, a caregiver focused on safety and mobility, and a caregiver primarily involved in aiding patients with memory issues. We carefully selected these participants to encompass a diverse range of caregiving experiences and challenges. For our surveys, we designed a questionnaire that received responses from 15 participants including family members and professional caregivers with varying ages and levels of caregiving experience. This approach allowed us to gain insights into the distinct needs and challenges faced by different types of caregivers. To broaden the scope of our research, we reached out to the wider online community by posting our survey on Reddit. This strategy was intended to gather diverse perspectives, including those from individuals who might not have been part of our interviews or survey pool otherwise. These research methods were chosen to ensure a comprehensive understanding of the issues encountered by elderly individuals and their caregivers on a day to day basis. We recognized the significance of encompassing diverse perspectives, environments, and experiences in our pursuit of developing effective and inclusive caregiving solutions through our specially designed prototype.
Fig.1: A caretaker helping the elderly person with his medicine
Design Research Results and Themes
From the survey we conducted we found the most common tasks caregivers perform are medication management, meal preparation and companionship. We also found that remote health monitoring and scheduling were the most common tasks that presented challenges with 55% of participants noting they wish remote health monitoring was easier or automated and 40% noting that they wish scheduling and reminders was easier or could be automated. We also found the biggest challenge in general for caretakers is emotional and physical stress with 80% of respondents noting this to be their biggest challenge. These results are consistent with our interviews where we found the emotional stresses of having to be away from the person they are caring for to be taxing.
Interesting themes that arose are participant caregivers, both in facilities and family members, often faced significant challenges including emotional and physical stress, balancing personal responsibilities, and effective communication with the elderly. Additionally, there is great diversity in care settings ranging from elderly care facilities to family members that come and care for the elderly person a few times a week. These diverse care settings call for caregiving solutions that consider the differences in environment and cater to both these settings if not more.
Proposed Design
The results showed that the caretakers main tasks were medication management and watching over elderly health while they are not with them. Our design solution is a smart watch system that seamlessly integrates with the life of caregivers and the elderly. Caregivers and elderly will both have the watch. Caregivers watch will have additional features such as scheduling the appointments and putting reminders about when to take which medication. Whereas, caregivers watch will get notifications to take their medicines, it will give both visual and voice notifications to both caregivers and the elderly. It will also monitor elderly’s biometrics, so if elderly person falls or their blood pressure is low, the watch will call 911 with elderly’s address and the issue and will also notify (voice notification and buzzing alert) the caregiver informing about elderly’s situation. Our sketch illustrates these scenarios.
The first sketch illustrates how the watch calls 911 and notifies the caregiver when elderly’s oxygen saturation level is low. Second sketch demonstrates how a caregiver is able to schedule elderly person’s appointments and medication schedule. By combining these two sketches, our solution offers a holistic approach to elderly care, enhancing caregiver efficiency while respecting the independence of seniors. The smartwatch provides real-time data and notifications, bridging the gap between caregivers, healthcare providers, and elderly individuals.
In conclusion, our innovative smartwatch system aspires to revolutionize elderly care, making it more efficient and empathetic. It addresses the key pain points identified in our research, ensuring a care setting that promotes independence while providing essential support. We believe that this technology solution can significantly enhance the lives of elderly individuals and their caregivers.
Scenario: 1
Scenario 2:
