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 ShaPresented in IEEE SMC 2006

Oct. 2006

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 (MIT’s 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 4Sight’s 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.

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

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

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

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)

Example Scenarios

• Activity Reminder

• Vital Sign Measurement

• Personal Belonging Localization

• Personal Behavior Profiling

• Emergency Detection

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)

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.)

I-Living System Architecture Design (Gateway Mode)

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

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

I-Living System Architecture Design (Cellphone Mode)

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Current Demo Implementation (Reminder)

1. Clinician input the reminder schedule: e.g. Take oximeter readings twice a day for one month

2. The reminders are saved in ALSP Server database as an XML

3. The reminder application in ALH polls the reminder XML, and reminds when it is time.

Current Demo Implementation (Vital Sign Reading)

1. Bluetooth Device Monitoring Daemon discovers the Bluetooth Oximeter (once it is turned on)

2. Oximeter Reading Application on ALH reads the oximeter and upload the reading into ALSP Server database

3. Clinician browses the oximeter reading history at his office.

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

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.

Related Work

• Age-in-Place Advanced Smart-Home System, Intel– Help elderly people with Alzheimer’s 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.

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

Thank You!