A LIFE SUPPORT NETWORK FOR ELDERLY PEOPLE LIVING

IN A RURAL AREAS

Bayme Abaydulla, Jun Sasaki, Michiru Tanaka, Keizo Yamada and Yutaka Funyu

Faculty of Software and Information Science, Iwate Prefectural University, 152-52 Sugo, Takizawa, Iwate, Japan

Keywords: Independent Senior, Remote Healthcare, Life Support.

Abstract: This paper proposes a new concept, a Life Support Network (LSN), for elderly people living in rural areas.

The network is an intranet that incorporates a safety confirmation system, a remote healthcare system and an

emergency information system. We developed an experimental LSN system and carried out a field

experiment in a typical rural town “Shiwa” in Iwate Prefecture of Japan. We demonstrated the experimental

LSN, called “Yui Net,” performs well in the field.

1 INTRODUCTION

Recently, the number of elderly people living in the

rural areas of the world, especially in developed

countries, has been increasing. In Japan, the number

of families which include people over 65 years old is

17,273,000 (37.7% of all homes), the percentage of

senior citizens who are in a couple is 28.7%, and

that of elderly people who live alone is 19.7%.

These rates are still increasing, and at an

unexpectedly high speed (The Cabinet Office,

2005).

Support systems are necessary to address

problems associated with advanced depopulation

and aging in rural regions. These systems might, for

example facilitate senior citizens’ being able to live

alone. In addition, various research approaches are

necessary in order to help prevent the solitary death

of elderly people. Some researchers have asserted

that information technology (IT) can be effective in

improving the welfare situation of the elderly.

In section two of this paper, we present the

concept of a Life Support Network. Then in Section

3 we introduce an experimental system we

developed, called “Yui Net,” and the results of the

field experiments performed on the system are

discussed in Section 4. We present our conclusions

and suggestions for future work in Section 5.

2 THE LIFE SUPPORT

NETWORK

We propose a type of intranet for a closed rural area

to support elderly life. We call this intranet a “Life

Support Network” (LSN). The LSN creates a

constant connection among volunteers, home-

visiting nurses, the regional hospital, drugstores and

other life and health related organizations. The LSN

is a high-security and high-speed network, which is

like a Local Area Network (LAN) carried over

optical-fiber cables. With current technology, it is

possible to construct such a network within an

appropriate budget (Komine et al., 2001 in Japan).

With the LSN, a senior citizen living alone can

send a daily safety confirmation message to his/her

remote contact person by way of an easy-to-use

terminal. The remote contact person could be, for

example, a helper or a care provider in a social

welfare council, a doctor or nurse in a healthcare

center or hospital, a friend, a neighbor or a family

member.

An elderly person can use the healthcare terminal

in his/her home every day. Each person measures

his/her vital data and confirms it through a public

facility such as a healthcare center connected to the

LSN (Sasaki et al., 2006). In this case, nurse home-

visits, home medical services, residential care,

emergency calls, and other necessary services

remain available. In case of an emergency, necessary

personnel such as a doctor or helper can quickly

196

Abaydulla B., Sasaki J., Tanaka M., Yamada K. and Funyu Y. (2008).

A LIFE SUPPORT NETWORK FOR ELDERLY PEOPLE LIVING IN A RURAL AREAS.

In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Health Informatics, pages 196-199

 SciTePress

engage in correspondence with the elderly client

(Shinagawa et al., 2006).

This plan was designed to achieve all stages or

services in the LSN through an information system.

The system ensures a safer living environment for

residents and senior citizens living alone in rural

areas, not only in Japan but throughout Asia (The

Cabinet Office, 2004).

3 EXPERIMENTAL SYSTEM

3.1 Structure of “Yui Net”

As the concept of the LSN is quite broad, we

decided to focus on some specific important

functions: safety confirmation for elderly people

living alone, and the remote healthcare service. We

call the set of the systems “Yui Net,” where “Yui”

means “helpful relationship” in Japanese.

The development project team consists of the

NEC Group for hardware development, Iwate

Prefectural University for software development,

and the Shiwa town in the Iwate Prefecture of Japan

as the feasibility test field. We developed each

system as an open source Web application, which is

available over a Virtual Private Network (VPN) in

the Shiwa town.

The Local Authorities Satellite Communications

Organization (LASCOM) of the Japanese Support

Organization supported our project by funding the

development. We would like to thank LASCOM for

their contribution.

3.2 Safety Confirmation System

The most commonly used technology to ensure the

safety of elderly people is sensor-type systems. One

Japanese company produces an interesting sensor-

type system. In this system, when the elderly client

uses the electronically-equipped kettle that has

telecommunication functions, the system sends a

text message to a remote family member’s cellular

phone (Zojirushi Corporation, 2005).

Many people dislike using such sensor-type

systems because of privacy concerns. Furthermore,

there are occasional occurrences of false alarm

messages being sent. Alternative safety systems with

human behaviour sensibility and high reliability are

required to augment sensor type systems (Shinagawa

et al., 2006).

We have reported on the development and

operation of a “Mimamori” (meaning “watching

over someone”) network system for the elderly in

the Village of Kawai in the Iwate Prefecture of

Japan. In developing the Mimamori system, an L-

mode terminal produced by NTT (Nippon

Telephone and Telegram Ltd.) was chosen. An L-

mode terminal is a telephone with a touch panel

display and internet connection function. When the

elderly client touches the display, the terminal sends

a message to the social welfare council and remote

family members (Yoneda et al., 2006).

Unfortunately, NTT has decided to stop producing

the L-mode terminal in 2010.

We therefore proposed a new method to confirm

elderly people's safety by using TV terminals instead

of L-mode terminals. We chose TV terminals

because most elderly people in Japan watch TV

routinely. According to a report by the NHK (Japan

Public Broadcasting Corporation), elderly people,

particularly those 70 years or older, watch TV for

five hours or more a day on average.

Figure1 shows the structure of the safety

confirmation system. The television with STB (Set

Top Box) and the Intranet environment are set up in

the home of an elderly person. The Web server with

the custom developed support system is located at

Iwate Prefectural University.

Figure 1: Safety confirmation system.

We can see the display is divided into two

sections. The left-hand section represents the current

TV program and the right-hand section represents

the first page of the Web-based safety confirmation

system. This page shows a brief message, below

which there are four response buttons to select from:

(1): My condition is good

(2): My condition is a little bad

(3): I will be absent tomorrow

(4): Please call me

Support

System

Authentication

System

Intranet

TV & Web Service

Broadcast

Service

STB

User

Remote Control

Card

Health Service

Center

A LIFE SUPPORT NETWORK FOR ELDERLY PEOPLE LIVING IN A RURAL AREAS

197

The user can easily select a button using the

STB’s remote control device. After the user selects

his/her current condition, a Web page displays a

confirmation message as shown in Figure 2(b). After

the user presses the close button, the TV screen

reverts to display the usual program broadcast. The

information selected by the user is transmitted to the

healthcare center and/or the remote family member

over the intranet for display on a PC as well as a text

message for display on a cellular phone.

If the user does not use the system to report their

condition in the morning, the related life supporter

(home helper, care provider, family member,

neighbour, etc.) uses a telephone to confirm the

user’s condition.

Figure 2: Samples of the TV display.

3.3 Remote Healthcare System

Figure 3 shows the structure of the remote

healthcare system.

The user can measure his/her vital data such as

blood pressure, heart rate, electrocardiogram, body

fat ratio and internal organ fats every day using

ahealth checker’; a stand alone device. The items to

be measured are determined according to user’s

specific health condition and interest.

The measured data stored in the health checker is

automatically transmitted to the PC via infra-red.

The PC, in turn transmits this data to the server

located at Iwate Prefectural University through the

intranet.

If a user has measures his/her vital data at a

facility, the system transmits the data to the user’s

file in the database. All the data for a user can be

input and accessed from anywhere.

Figure 3: Remote healthcare system.

4 EXPERIMENT

4.1 Experimental Method

We carried out the experiment from December 18,

2006 to February 9, 2007 to confirm the

effectiveness of the system.

We selected and requested the participation of

three persons (a male aged 80 and two females aged

82 and 76) who live alone to use the safety

confirmation system. The users sent their condition

information through the system every day using the

STB‘s remote control.

We selected and requested the participation of

three different persons (three males aged 73, 59 and

82) to use the remote healthcare system. We set up

the remote healthcare system in the office of three

public facilities located in Shiwa town. There, any

person with an ID card can use the remote healthcare

system.

Table 1 shows the categories and numbers of

system users in the experiment.

Intranet

Authentication

stem

Use

ID Card

Health Service Cente

Authentication S

stem

PC for sending

the data

Health

Public Facilit

Remote Healthcare S

stem

Thank you for your information.

Have a nice da

(b): After selecting the condition.

(a): Selecting the condition.

Usual TV Program Web Top Page

Shiwa Town

Report your condition

Good morning, Mr Taro.

How is your condition this

mornin

My condition is a little bad

I will absen

tomorrow

Please call me

My condition is good

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Table 1: System users in the experiment.

Name of

system

Category of users Number of

users

Home user living

alone

Family user living

apart from the home

user

Safety

confirmation

system

System manager 6

Home user 3 Remote

healthcare

system

User in each office of

three public facilities

Following the experimental period we obtained

the users’ opinions on the systems by way of

discussion and a survey questionnaire.

4.2 Experimental Results and

Discussion

4.2.1 Safety Confirmation System

Regarding the operability when using the safety

confirmation system, two home users answered

“comprehensible” and one female home user

answered “incomprehensible” because of her low IT

literacy. Two users said the TV screen display is

easy to understand and they hope to continue using it.

The system managers responded that they were able

to operate the system satisfactorally. Family users

living apart from the home users reported they felt a

“feeling of safety” regarding the home users.

We confirmed that users could use the system

with little difficulty and the life supporters and their

families felt assured by checking the information

sent from the user every day by cellular text message

and web page.

The assimilation of the system into the

responsible organizations and optimal management

in cases of a lack of safety information are issues

which remain to be resolved.

4.2.2 Remote Healthcare System

Sixty percent of all users said the remote healthcare

system was “comprehensible” and easy to use,

including the health checker for measuring health

data and the PC for sending the data on.

We confirmed that the users could operate the

system comparatively easily and they could take

interest in their own health condition by using the

remote healthcare system.

In future we plan to propose systems to

effectively use the vital data captured for users in the

town.

5 CONCLUSIONS

This paper proposes a new concept: a Life Support

Network (LSN) for elderly people living in rural

areas. We developed two experimental systems as

part of the LSN and carried out a field experiment.

The experimental system, which has a safety

confirmation system and a remote healthcare system,

obtained a satisfactory evaluation from users and

shows good feasibility with satisfactory results in the

field.

The experiment is the first step in constructing

the LSN concept. It is important to prepare several

life-support services, which the users and their

relatives can select according to their particular

health condition and social environments.

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