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N.González Vega,  A. Kämäräinen,  O. Kalla . CONFIDENCE: Support to older people's independent living. In M. Penttonen & P. Pitkänen (Eds.), Psykologia2010, 18-20 August 2010, Jyväskylä, Finland Jyväskylä: Kopijyvä Oy, 41

 

Abstract:

 

Fear of falling accounts for 40% of the nursing home admissions among older people, decreases quality of life and impairs the ability to perform daily activities. The main objective of the EC FP7 project Ubiquitous Care System to Support Independent Living is to develop and integrate innovative technologies to detect abnormal events (such as falls) or behavioural changes that may be related to a health problem. The CONFIDENCE prototype will be reliable, will not constrain the users’ daily life, will be easy to use, and will operate indoors. The user will wear a few tags, whose coordinates will be used to reconstruct the user’s bodily posture through radio technology. This information will be analysed in real time to decide whether to issue an alarm to the emergency services when abnormalities are detected. The end-users will be involved in the RTD activities by co-defining the specifications, monitoring and testing the prototype. With the proposed approach, the elderly will gain confidence and independence. These effects will be measured using the Fall Efficacy Scale (FES). The project aims to achieve a fair confidence level in activities of daily living, i.e., FES value above 50. Psychological, ethical and legal surveillance activities will be carried out throughout the project. CONFIDENCE will contribute to prolong older people’s personal autonomy and participation in society decreasing the need of institutionalization, thus, significantly reducing health care expenditure. In this symposium, the results of three sub-studies of the project will be introduced.