AndroidCare: A Simple and Low Cost Assisted Living Solution

Population aging places a growing stress on society’s resources. There is a need for Assisted Living (AL) technologies that allow the elderly to live independently as long as possible. The AndroidCare open source project aims to explore what functionality can be provided in a low cost AL solution where no professional health organization is involved in the deployment or maintenance of the solution, nor in supervising the patient; all these tasks are carried out by a relative of the elder. Therefore, in the system’s design simplicity of use has prevailed over having a lot of features. It is based on standard off-the-shell commodity hardware (a smartphone) and it provides 1) assistance to the elder in complying with the treatment of chronic diseases; 2) monitors and alerts of the occurrence of risk situations such as falls; and 3) simplifies the supervision of the elder’s therapy and behavior by the caregiver.