Inquiry Based Learning

Abstract—Individuals with cognitive impairment have difficulty successfully performing activities of daily living, which can lead to decreased independence. In order to help these individuals age in place and decrease caregiver burden, technologies for assistive living have gained popularity over the last decade. In this work, a context-aware prompting system is implemented, augmented by a smart phone to determine prompt situations in a smart home environment. While context-aware systems use temporal and environmental information to determine context, we additionally use ambulatory information from accelerometer data of a phone which also acts as a mobile prompting device. A pilot study with healthy young adults is conducted to examine the feasibility of using a smart phone interface for prompt delivery during activity completion in a smart home environment.
Keywords: context-aware prompting; smart phones; smart homes; activity recognition
I. INTRODUCTION
The world’s population is aging. By 2040, 23% of the US population will be age 65+ [1]. The number of individuals who will be unable to live independently and need assistance due to cognitive impairments, will rise rapidly [2]. Older adults with cognitive difficulties experience impairments in daily functioning [3, 4]. When activity difficulties are encountered, individuals typically receive prompts from family members to help them initiate or complete the activity accurately. The amount of prompting caregivers offer to older adults and individuals with Mild Cognitive Impairment increases as cognitive impairment progresses, which increases the amount of caregiver responsibility and burden [5]. Functional impairment in these individuals may lead to negative consequences for individuals, caregivers and society [6]. Caregivers report offering prompts to individuals with cognitive impairment to assist them with IADLs [7], and prompting likely increases as cognitive impairment progresses.
Over the last decade,