The Specification of New Technology to Support Assisted Living (AL) from a Biopsychosocial, Stakeholder Relationship and Ethics Perspective

This paper reports on early stage human factors research undertaken as part of an industry/academia collaboration to advance new assisted living technology for elders aged between 55 and 90 years. It is argued that the provision of person centered assistive living (AL) technology - predicated on (1) biopsychosocial models of well-being, (2) necessary transformations in the social, information and healthcare process relationships between seniors and relevant actors in their personal and professional community and (3), rights based frameworks (ethics), has the potential to improve an older person's life physically, socially and psychologically. The proposed technology will be optimized for different contexts, including private/smart homes, residential/care homes, palliative care and assisted living communities.