Growing Older / Liz Taylor
New technology may help us 'age in place'

By Liz Taylor
Seattle Times columnist

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A second is the fury and frustration that hits us — as Lynn Johnston's cartoon "For Better or Worse" illustrates — when, for safety or cognitive reasons, we're no longer able to perform simple, everyday tasks. It often signals the time to move.

Hold on tight for some good news: Technology is about to change this. Thanks to new research, we're on the brink of some tsunami-sized sea changes in home care.

Intriguing ideas are coming from a number of sources, including Intel, the well-known maker of computer microprocessors, which in early 2002 launched the Proactive Health Research Project, a multiyear effort to bring "ubiquitous computing" to eldercare. Still in the laboratory stage, the dream of this project is to develop technologies that will help people live at home more safely, easily, and longer, despite significant physical and mental decline. Here are some of the intriguing possibilities:

• Your dad, diagnosed with Alzheimer's, gets up in the middle of the night and turns on the stove. A sensor network throughout the house awakens your mother so she can bring him safely back to bed.

• Sometimes your neighbor can't remember simple tasks, such as how to make a cup of tea. It's the sequence of steps she can't remember, a common indicator of "midstage" cognitive decline. A network of sensors tracks the objects she picks up and the cabinets she opens and closes, detecting difficulties. An audio prompt asks if she needs help. When she replies, "yes," a kitchen monitor gives her step-by-step assistance.

• You worry about your dad, age 80, who lives 1,000 miles away. Did he get out of bed this morning? Take his medicine? Has he fallen? You used to call him several times a day to check on him, but now you go about your business, knowing that the sensors in his home will alert you if he has trouble.

The project's purpose, says its director, Eric Dishman, is to envision and develop proactive systems that can anticipate a person's needs and improve the quality of life for both patient and caregiver.

Someday, Dishman imagines, there will be smart pillboxes that track usage, smart furniture that recognizes and records human activity and smart appliances that make use of ordinary home devices such as televisions and clock radios to prompt residents to remember routine tasks and guide them in carrying them out, such as popping dinner into the microwave.

To get there, Dishman and his colleagues have conducted ethnographic field research — going into more than 100 homes of people who need care, then interviewing and observing how everyone involved behaves, including spouses, caregivers, friends, and kids.

"We see patients in a much different way compared to their doctor or an Alzheimer's expert," says Dishman. "On Monday, a man may recognize his wife, on Tuesday he may not and on Wednesday he may be somewhere in between. This is a huge problem for families but also for technology! We have to design these machines to respond to people's needs as they change."
 
An epidemic of social isolation affects people with cognitive decline, says Dishman — because they're afraid they won't remember their friend's name or how to use the telephone. The decline goes faster with increased isolation. "That's why one of our goals is to use technology to help cognitively impaired people stay in touch longer with their friends and families."

Dishman's colleagues are now developing a prototype environment for testing with actual people. By early next year, they hope to put them into people's homes. Many of the core technologies are being developed in Seattle's Intel lab, headed by professor James Landay at the University of Washington — technology that can track everyday objects people use, such as kitchen utensils, a toothbrush or a book.

Because many of these devices will be "off-the-shelf" — already available at the store for other uses — and wireless (you won't have to rebuild your house to install them), costs will be within reach.

In fact, Intel's goal is to "prime the pump" and encourage many more universities and researchers throughout the county to get involved. Costs will come down as more research turns ordinary household items such as home-security systems, cellphones and computers into platforms for helping people "age in place" at home.

"Just think," says Dishman, "Your PC may someday help you stay home as you age. Soon it won't be a fantasy."

For more information on this project, go to www.intel.com/research/prohealth.

E-mail Liz Taylor at: growingolder@seattletimes.com or write to P. O. Box 11601, Bainbridge Island, WA 98110.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company