ILiving: An Open System Architecture for Assisted Living

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I-Living An Open System Architecture for
Assisted Living

• Qixin Wang, Wook Shin, Xue Liu, Zheng Zeng, Cham
  Oh, Bedoor K. AlShebli, Marco Caccamo, Carl A.
  Gunter, Elsa Gunter, Jennifer Hou, Karrie
  Karahalios, and Lui Sha
• Presented in IEEE SMC 2006
• Oct. 2006

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Motivation

• The aging of baby boomers has become a social and
  economic challenge
• Population
• In USA alone, population over age 65 is expected
  to hit 70 million by 2030, doubling from 35
  million in 2000, and similar increases are
  expected worldwide (MITs TECHNOLOGY REVIEW
  July/August 003).
• Expenditure
• Expenditure for health-care projected to rise to
  15.9 of the GDP (2.6 trillion) by 2010 (Digital
  4Sights Health Care Industry Study).
• Unless the cost of senior care can be
  significantly reduced by technological means, it
  could bankrupt the already shaky social security
  and medicare systems.

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Motivation

• Move-away from the nuclear family household and
  the increasingly youth-oriented society
• Leaves many people to their own means in
  receiving health care and satisfaction from life.
• Only 10 of elderly people of age 65-85 and 25
  of those of age 85 and above in the USA are
  institutionalized (National Institute of Aging).
• Numbers of elderly people living alone in Korea
  has increased 100 in the last ten years.
• Many suffer from deteriorating sensing and
  interacting capabilities, such as memory, eye
  sight, hearing, dexterity and mobility.
• Many suffer from chronic diseases

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Design Goals

• Dependability
• Critical Services will be failure safe
• High availability
• Robustness
• Low Cost and Flexibility
• Open to low-cost third-party devices
• Assumption, protocol, QoS guarantee discrepancies
  are to be discovered by machine checkable means
• Security and Privacy
• Different levels of info disclosure to different
  roles
• Authentication, Encryption, and Anti-DOS
  (Denial-Of-Service)
• QoS Provisioning
• Timing, reliability, criticality guarantees
• Over wireless and wireline

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Design Goals

• Wireless Interference Mitigation
• Bluetooth v.s. IEEE 802.11b
• IEEE 802.11a v.s. Microwave
• QoS guarantee under wireless interference
• Human Computer Interfaces
• Lightweight
• Easy-to-Use
• Safe and Robust to user mistakes
• Provide different control levels of info
  disclosure

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Design Goals

• Thorough Evaluation and User Group Studies
• Evaluated in terms of
• the extent to which the technology help elderly
  people with their independent living in the home
  or assisted living facilities
• their attitudes toward deploying these
  technologies
• Different hypothesis amenable to
  theoretically-grounded tests will be established
• Detailed comprehensive evaluation carried out by
  professionals in real facilities (WUSTL)

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Example Scenarios

• Activity Reminder
• Vital Sign Measurement
• Personal Belonging Localization
• Personal Behavior Profiling
• Emergency Detection

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I-Living System Architecture Design (Gateway Mode)

• Assited Person (AP)s Home covered by Wireless
  LAN (WLAN)
• Gateway Router connects AP home WLAN to the
  Internet
• Assisted Living Hub (ALH) manages dumb devices
  through peripheral network (e.g. Bluetooth)

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I-Living System Architecture Design (Gateway Mode)

• ALH and Smart Devices can connect to Internet via
  Gateway Router
• Assisted Living Service Provider (ALSP) Server
  database is the central database where all data
  is stored (vital sign, reminder, personnel
  information, role access policy, logs, etc.)

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I-Living System Architecture Design (Gateway Mode)

• Clients of ALSP Server include Caregiver,
  Clinician, Designated Relatives of the AP, and
  the AP him/herself

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I-Living System Architecture Design (Cellphone
Mode)

• In case of the Gateway Router failure, A
  Bluetooth Cellphone can dial up as a cellphone
  modem
• ALH and Smart Device associate with the cellphone
  modem through bluetooth network

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I-Living System Architecture Design (Cellphone
Mode)

• This also allows assisted-living service when the
  AP is out-of-home

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System Architecture Design of Assisted-Living-Hub
(ALH)

• Device Monitoring Daemons Detecting the join and
  leave of various assisted living devices (e.g.
  Bluetooth oximeter, Bluetooth scale, ZigBee
  accelerometers etc.)
• Device Registry Service Local database on what
  devices are available, and the proxy objects to
  access the corresponding devices.

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System Architecture Design of Assisted-Living-Hub
(ALH)

• Unified Application-Peripheral Communication
  APIs Encapsulates the underlying networking APIs
  (e.g. Bluetooth, Conventional Internet, ZigBee,
  Infrared) to a unified networking API.

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System Architecture Design of Assisted-Living-Hub
(ALH)

• Other Java APIs from J2ME/J2SE J2ME shall be
  provided if the ALH is a PDA J2SE is provided if
  the ALH is a PC
• Internet Heartbeat Daemon Checking whether the
  Gateway Router is alive. In case of Gateway
  Router failure/recovery, it shall be in charge of
  activating/deactivating the Bluetooth Cellphone
  Modem

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System Architecture Design of Assisted-Living-Hub
(ALH)

• ALH Main Deamon Activating/Deactivating specific
  assisted living applications (e.g. taking
  oximeter readings, reminding)

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Security and Privacy Mechanisms

• To protect information confidentiality (different
  visibility to different roles)
• Partial Encryption
• e.g. first encrypt the vital sign reading using
  the key between AP and clinician then encrypt
  the whole message (with administrative info)
  using the key known to AP, ALSP Server and the
  clinician. Therefore, although the message is
  stored in ALSP Server, but ALSP Server cannot
  read the vital sign.

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Security and Privacy Mechanisms

• To ensure data integrity in the home WLAN with
  link-level authentication and encryption
• Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 Personal (WPA-PSK)
• Propose using specialized USB memory stick to
  deliver encryption keys

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Current Demo Implementation (Reminder)

• Clinician input the reminder schedule e.g. Take
  oximeter readings twice a day for one month
• The reminders are saved in ALSP Server database
  as an XML
• The reminder application in ALH polls the
  reminder XML, and reminds when it is time.

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Current Demo Implementation (Vital Sign Reading)

• Bluetooth Device Monitoring Daemon discovers the
  Bluetooth Oximeter (once it is turned on)
• Oximeter Reading Application on ALH reads the
  oximeter and upload the reading into ALSP Server
  database
• Clinician browses the oximeter reading history at
  his office.

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Related Work

• Center for Future Health (CFH), University of
  Rochester
• Key component visual system for object
  recognition and tracking
• Our research complements CFH in two aspects
• Focus on assisted living environment CFH is for
  nursing homes and hospitals
• Focus on open software architecture
• None-intrusive sensing instead of visual system

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Related Work

• Aware Home, Georgia Tech
• Focuses on context awareness
• Ours focus on QoS provisioning, wireless
  networking, security and privacy, HCI
• Smart In-Home Monitoring System, University of
  Virginia
• Focus on non-intrusive data collection
• The data management system is complementary to
  our research.

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Related Work

• Age-in-Place Advanced Smart-Home System, Intel
• Help elderly people with Alzheimers diseases
• The focus is not on systems reliability,
  robustness, security, and wireless coexistance.
• To our best knowledge, we are the first to
• advocate an open environment that allows devices
  from different vendors to co-exist and
  collaborate
• Working with experienced medical and health care
  experts at Washing University in Saint Louis in
  employing a comprehensive, systematic HCI-based
  methodology for evaluation among real-world
  elderly people.

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Conclusion

• Openess and Flexibility is provided by deploying
  Device Registry Service, Proxy, Unified
  Application-Peripheral Communication APIs, XML
  and Java technology.
• Availability is ensured by enabling system to
  operate both in the Gateway Mode and Cellphone
  Mode.
• Security and Privacy are addressed partial
  encryption, WPA2-PSK
• Implemented 2 demo applications for
  proof-of-concept

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Thank You!