City4Age Lecce pilot Application

Module/Solution Overview

The City4Age Lecce pilot Application is an Android App that captures relevant information regarding the behaviour of a user, both within his/her house (in conjunction with the provided home infrastructure) and around the city. In particular, the City4Age Lecce App implements the following functionalities:

• Indoor localization: the App interacts with the BLE Beacons for detecting the indoor localization of the user within his/her house and in the monitored places in the City;
• Outdoor Localization: the App uses the smartphone’s GPS receiver to detect when the user is outdoor;
• Still detection: by exploiting publicly available software libraries (Google Awareness APIs), the App is able to detect the periods of time in which the user is completely still while he/she is at home;
• Walking detection: by exploiting the same Google libraries, the App is also able to detect and track outdoor walking sessions of the elderly user;
• Smart-plug interaction: the App periodically scans and connects to the smart-plugs installed at home to detect if the monitored device (TV or washing machine) is switched on or off;
• Phone usage detection: the App tracks time and duration of all incoming, outgoing and missed calls
• Data gateway: the App collects data from the above modules, formats the related LEAs and forwards them to the CBB by exploiting the smartphone data connection. On the CBB, daily Measures are computed on the basis of the collected LEAs, and sent (along with LEAs) to the City4Age Shared Repository.

The City4Age Lecce App is self-starting, it runs on the background and does not require any interaction from the user.

Innovation

The City4Age Lecce pilot App main innovation is that it allows to capture indoors and outdoors information about users’ behaviour in a transparent way for the user (the App runs in background and no interaction from the user is needed at all).

Business Impact 

The potential business impact of the City4Age Lecce pilot App, together with the associated visualization tools like the City4Age Dashboard and the Your Data App, can be manifold. Firstly, geriatricians, practitioners and caregivers can exploit the collected information about user behaviour to enhance services offered to elderly people.

Secondly, city service providers (such as social services and local shops and commercial activities managers) can benefit from the whole system in order to customize the services they provide.

Finally, also elderly users can improve their lifestyle by simply watching summarized information related to their daily activities. This could lead to new needs and new requests for services.

Interoperability 

The City4Age Lecce pilot App uses standard sensors and communication interfaces to get the behavioural information, such as Bluetooth Low Energy and GPS, and it is fully compliant with the lWoX-WoX communication paradigm, at the basis of the City4Age Platform. This means that it is interoperable and easily scalable if new BLE-based devices come to the market.

Stakeholders profile

Health related professionals that would like to monitor behaviours of elderly patients.

Sociologists and researchers that would like to analyse elderly behaviours, as such or as part of a bigger study, trying to find out correlation among apparently disjoint behaviours.

City service providers to get information about their elderly citizens.

Commercial activities manager to get information about their elderly customers.

Competitors

The City4Age Lecce pilot App captures a combination of behaviours, focused both on a home and a city scope, that support the identification of MCI and frailty status. At the moment, there are no similar app solutions that implement similar functionalities.

Future availability 

Open Source

Contact info

city4age@atc.gr