Ubiquitous Community Care Using Sensor Network and Mobile Agent Technology

The advancement of medical technology greatly extends people's lifespan. Nevertheless, the continuous falling of birth rate has promoted an “aging population” in many nations. It also means that more emphasis will be placed on improving the quality of life and care for the elders. Most long-term care services in Taiwan are provided on an institutional basis by nursing homes due to the structural changes in society and family. Traditional family-based home care system is perishing. Once an elderly people are unable to care for himself, he must be placed in a nursing home. The majority of the elderly, however, would much prefer "age in place" and live out their lives where they belong. Taiwan and other countries around the world are all striving for establishing pervasive community care services. To provide more responsive and personalized care services, this research aims to develop a “Smart Community Care System (SCCS)” based on the concept of Ambient Intelligence (AmI) using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Mobile Agent (MA) technologies. Caregivers may locate care-receivers easily in a community with RFID while MA furnishes timely and accurate information for the care provision. The care historical data can be automatically recorded as well. The SCCS is expected to be able to promote the pervasive community care services with convenience, context awareness and accuracy.