IONIS

Ease the life of informal caregivers of people with mild dementia.

You want to know that the caretaker is in safe and they have to be ready for personal support when it is needed. Therefore, IONIS enables real-time remote tracking of the status and health of your beloved.
IONIS integrates technologies and services that address dementia specific challenges and offer support to both caretakers and caregivers alike.

Main IONIS functions:

• Detailed health monitoring.
• Fall detection and alert.
• Sleep monitoring.
• Memory and cognitive support (object localization, smart mobility tracking, wandering detection).
• Indoor and Outdoor localization, geofencing.

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IONIS includes a web portal based on the interconnection of various high-tech devices and is user oriented to a wide range of possible challenges and solutions. IONIS solutions with its user-tailor-made functionalities can replace certain day-to-day functions and support a person with MCI or mild to moderate dementia, such as a memory problem and orientation or a decline in understanding.
Your beloved can lead an autonomous life and feel safe:

• All relevant events (or missed events) trigger and alert to you as informal caregivers.
• Personalized calendar and reminders help them not to miss mediation and social events,
• Their sleeping may be improved by activity analysis and personal advice based on activity patterns to achieve improved sleep quality.
• Object tracking function reduces daily stress.
• Easy to use, multimodal interfaces according to their needs.

IONIS project Synopsis

People with dementia are evidencing, already from the early stage of the illness, memory loss, episodes of confusion and space-time disorientation.
THE IONIS SOLUTION addresses the needs of people with dementia, and is motivated by the successful work and excellent final evaluation of the NITICS (Networked InfrasTructure for Innovative home Care Solutions - Call) AAL (Ambient Assisted Living). IONIS intends to exploit NITICS innovation and extend the platform with new technologies and services for both indoor and outdoor support. IONIS will build on the AAL NITICS platform and thus offer fully integrated and validated solutions for health monitoring, home automation, personal agenda with reminders, alerts, caregiver administrative tools (e.g. administrative tools for several users, sensor settings) and profile. The extended platform will integrate technologies and services that can address dementia specific challenges and offer support to both caretakers and caregivers:

• Location based services for indoor localization (e.g. indoor tracking of users and object localization) by further developing the NITICS innovative wearable tags (patent under preparation) of the WUT partner. A variety of personalized options (velcro attachable tags, bracelet, etc.) which can be used depending on the users’ preferences (e.g. attached to slippers or cloths) will be designed. Indoor mobility patterns extracted from the collected data will search for dementia specific behavior (e.g. wandering) and will be indicative of disease progression or of other related ailments (e.g. depression). Collected data will also detect and alert (if agreed with the users) in case of common problems in dementia (e.g. depression, wandering.
• LBS for object localization by integration of own solutions based on embedded Linux and commercial Bluetooth tags. We will also consider various off-the-shelf solutions such as Tile-solutions or Lapa2-solutions.
• LBS for outdoor localization and geofencing by integrating GPS tracking and communication devices (see PAD in sect 2.1) to allow dementia sufferers to enjoy outdoor activities and perform essential task such as shopping or visiting with relatives and friends. Considered solutions for integration into IONIS are PeopleTrax and Neelam.
• Alerting and easy communication through one-button calls to designated caregivers to enhance feeling of safety when outdoor.
• Sleep quality monitoring through non-wearable sensors such as “Withings Aura mattress pad” (www.withings.com) or the “EMFIT QS+CARE™” which is also a sleep sensor (www.emfit.com).
• Through simplified symbol-based interfaces (i.e. symbols like old fashioned things well known to the person) which will be easy and intuitive to use be used by both dementia people and their caregivers who are often elderly themselves.

Strategic objectives of IONIS:

• Exploit existing AAL solutions that are already in the consortium together with new technologies in building a modular platform that can compensate in an adaptive way for mild to moderate dementia associated deficiencies such as memory problems and cognitive decline.
• Support people with dementia to be more confident and feel more positive both indoor and outdoor.
• Avoid isolation and help people with dementia to sustain their optimal level of activity and mobility for as long as possible, as well as enhance their individual sense of confidence, autonomy, competence, security and safety.
• Reduce stress and burden for informal caregivers through timely alerts issued by the platform or triggered by users.
• Ensure communication and information between informal caregivers and professionals to help the former in their caregiving activities.
• Involve service providers (social services, insurance companies, rehabilitation centers, etc.) who can obtain valuable information regarding behavioral patterns and needs of people with dementia and their caregivers in order to improve the services they offer to this category of customers. This will support and/or enable improved services for the dementia sufferers.
• Ensure a 70-75% user satisfaction (for both primary and secondary users) from the users in the pilots.