Project Confidence

Project name:

Ubiquitous Care System to Support Independent Living

Project reference:

FP7-ICT-214986

Start date:

01.02.2008

End date:

31.01.2011

The main objective of this project is the development and integration of innovative technologies to build a care system for the detection of abnormal events (such as falls) or unexpected behaviours that may be related to a health problem in elderly people.

Nowadays, most of the care systems in the market are limited to detect falls. The innovation of the system developed in the CONFIDENCE project is that it will not only detect falls, but also identify short and long term unexpected behaviours that could indicate health problems.

Thanks to these features, the elderly people will gain the confidence and independence. CONFIDENCE will be a cost effective, non-intrusive and reliable system that will increase the quality of life and security of the elderly and, thus, prolong their personal autonomy and participation in society. Not only will the elderly profit from the system, but also their families and caregivers, since the burden on them will be substantially reduced. CONFIDENCE aims to decrease the need of institutionalisation of the elderly.

The proposed system will work indoors. Information about the user’s location, together with some environment information, will be analysed to decide whether to trigger an alarm. The system will be easy to use and will not constrain the user’s daily life. The user will keep control of the system and can customise the alarm protocol.

In case of an abnormal situation such as a fall or an accident, CONFIDENCE will permit a rapid actuation of the health services, which will decrease the negative consequences of the accident (worsening of injuries, psychological impact of being alone and injured, etc…)

The result of this multidisciplinary research will be a working prototype. The end-users will be involved in the RTD activities by co-defining the specifications, monitoring the project and testing the lines prototype. The involvement of users in an early stage of the project will contribute to meet their requirements and will increase the acceptability of the final system.

Reliability. This aspect is essential to increase the quality of life of the elderly. The system must have low false alarm rates.

Self-learning; that is, the system will “learn” from previous situations.

Non-intrusive, in order to preserve the user’s privacy. Moreover, the user will keep control on the alarm protocol and location data will only be processed with the consent of the user and for the necessary duration for the provision of a value added service. Thus, CONFIDENCE will follow the Directive 95/46/EC about the protection of personal data and the Directive 2002/58/EC about the protection of personal data in the electronic communication sector.

Ease of use. The system will be easy to use. Since it is a portable system it has to be easy to wear, so that it does not constrain the user’s daily life.