Enabling NFC technology to support activities in an Alzheimer's day center

Abstract

Alzheimer's patients need a large amount of varied types of attention by carers, due to the disorders of memory and orientation they present. Knowledge about the particular state of each individual day-care patient is sometimes deficient, however, as assistants have no time to supervise patients' records because they do not wish to have their attention distracted from care. In this work we present a proposal to solve this problem. A complement to support the information management routine by adapting Near Field Communication Technology is offered here... By means of touching tags with mobile phones, day center assistants carry out this management. This is done via tags placed throughout the context, which means on patients, places, devices and applications. With this simple interaction, some aspects of the routine in this kind of context, such as information about the patient's basic status, orientation, door security, therapy and other activities can be dealt with. In addition, this proposal concludes with an information-filtering process whose purpose is to achieve an easy interaction method with mobile phones and provide recommendations to assistants and family. Finally, our process offers appropriate information to physicians.