Hospitals are institutions that are vital to the human population; their standing in society is unquestionable and it is with great reliance that we live with them. But how can we bring together design and technology to administer health outside of hospitals?
The IwB, in collaboration with its commutual cohorts, presented the idea of having health care convenient to you in your very own home—the Health eHome. They explored the idea of embedding health care in the home by embracing technology, essentially giving your house the ability to “take care of youâ€.
In recent years, there has been an increase in the value that we have been placing on our quality and independence of life. Health care is a crucial institution in society that is helping to support our desired lifestyle.
Can health care be embedded in the home instead of relying solely on hospital and clinics? Year over year increases in health care costs are forcing governments and citizens to look at alternative ways of keeping the population healthy and delivering health care services outside of an institutional setting.
Harnessing technological advances and the social desire to live a more independent lifestyle, the Institute without Boundaries (IwB), along with its supporting partners, has started a new project called the Health eHome. The Health eHome will be a home that assists residents to monitor their health through different stages of their lives, from infancy to old age.
The Health eHome will be embedded with special features and technologies to restore balance to body systems and prevent physical deterioration by providing information and a supportive environment. Within the different stages of a person’s life, permanent, temporary or reoccurring health problems may arise. The Health eHome will discover design opportunities for information, support and stimulants by embedding solutions and technologies into objects and spaces, to maintain safety, dignity and access for its residents.
Based on the trends and needs of the health care industry, the Health eHome will:
• Address the needs of an aging population
• Address the needs of youth with chronic illness
• Help prevent chronic disease through primary prevention techniques
• Allow for residents to maintain their health and, when needed, be treated in the comfort of their own homes
• Provide residents with a wealth of personalized health information to help them make informed decisions in their day-to-day lives.
For more than 20 years, research in technology and architecture have been developing prototypes and houses in an attempt to create the ultimate intelligent environment that can improve residents’ quality of life. Overall the focus has been on embedding monitors and sensors to learn about user habits and adapt to them to make life easier.
The next step with intelligent housing solutions targeted at improving health and well-being include:
• Better visualization and communication of health data collected by sensors throughout the home.
• Features to make residents more self-aware of their bodies needs
• More focus on improving health and well being of residents rather than on pure convenience and simplicity
• Accommodating residents of varying ages, levels of health and levels of physical ability, rather than being tailored to residents with a specific disease, ailment or injury.
While there are thousands of applications and gadgets related to health and fitness available, many do not yet allow for full lifestyle integration between applications. The next step with mobile applications and devices relating to health, fitness, nutrition and well-being should be for:
• Full and ubiquitous lifestyle integration.
• Dynamic/automatic input to monitor food intake and exercise
• Data exchange between other functions monitoring daily life such as medical attention, sleep patterns, stress and social interactions.
• The development of a holistic monitoring tool to manage and analyze information about life style to inspire self awareness
The Health eHome project will be divided in four phases. Each phase is a year long and will approach health as a cycle that considers prevention, support, restoration and reaction. This framework was inspired by a methodology developed by Olive Branch Services Ltd.
This health checklist uses systems for users to gain awareness about themselves and modify their lifestyle. Based on the principle of homeostasis, this checklist has been proven to raise awareness about the impacts of everyday decisions on one’s health.
Starting with childhood then progressing through adulthood and old age, the research will focus on finding suitable monitoring tools for the body, the home, the community and the integration of these tools.
This article was originally published here.