Smart Elderly Care System and Health Management Empowered by

Big Data: A Case Study of the Innovation of the Intelligent

Wheelchair Application

Yixuan Li

, Yuze Bo

, Yang Zhao

and Xinyang Jiao

School of Management, Tianjin University of Technology, China

Keywords: Big Data, Smart Elderly Care, Ecosystem, Innovation, Health Management.

Abstract: Under the context of big data, the relevant departments of the state have launched an in-depth design of the

elderly problem and called on social forces to play a leading role in the elderly care industry. Some people

in the elderly care industry predict that 2020 will be the pioneering year of elderly care in China. The

improvement of the smart elderly care system and health management is the general momentum. The

Chinese people are committed to reuniting their families and returning to their homelands eventually, so the

development of smart elderly care in China is an impending trend.

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 The Living Conditions and

Psychological Characteristics of the

Elderly in China

1.1.1

Living Conditions

Today the world is facing a common problem -

population aging. Especially in China, the population

aging falls into a large demographic imbalance

between rich and poor countries in terms of the

economic development gap, and following the

retirement of the elderly, their welfare and

entitlements are below the world standard. The

majority of the elderly in China currently have

low-income levels and China is confronting an

unprecedented aging process. According to the data

released by the National Bureau of Statistics, from

2014 to 2020, the population of the elderly over 60

years old in China increased from 210 million to 264

million, with a compound annual growth rate of

3.72%. In 2020, the total population of the elderly

increased by 3.99% year-on-year, accounting for

18.7% of the total population. According to the

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4884-4459

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3102-4764

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0012-2684

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8437-738X

international classification standard of the elderly

population, the proportion of the population over 60

years old in the total population is greater than 10%,

which is considered to have entered an aging society.

1.1.2

Psychological Characteristics

As the elderly age, their psychology also undergoes

significant changes, with the most significant

characteristic being their increasing dependence on

their children. They yearn for the company of their

children. Their mood will fluctuate considerably if

their children are not around or when they are

subjected to an unfamiliar environment. This will be

detrimental to the physical and psychological health

of the elderly (Salter 2015).

After retirement, the elderly will no longer

regularly participate in cumbersome daily affairs and

will find it difficult to keep abreast of the

development and progress of society. Therefore, in a

subjective sense, they need more opportunities to

communicate with the outside world and seek

psychological rewards from it.

1.2 Explanation of Basic Concepts

1.2.1 Smart Elderly Care

Smart elderly care is a new concept emerging with

the development of the times, which can be simply

Li, Y., Bo, Y., Zhao, Y. and Jiao, X.

Smart Elderly Care System and Health Management Empowered by Big Data: A Case Study of the Innovation of the Intelligent Wheelchair Application.

DOI: 10.5220/0011374300003438

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Health Big Data and Intelligent Healthcare (ICHIH 2022), pages 565-571

ISBN: 978-989-758-596-8

565

understood as “Internet + elderly care”. Smart

elderly care is a sensor network system and

information platform, which mainly serves the

elderly who age alone at home, in the community,

and the elderly care institutions, providing fast,

prompt, efficient, low-cost, and intelligent elderly

care services for these objects.

1.2.2 Smart Elderly Care Ecosystem

The smart elderly care ecosystem is similar to a ring

model, with the central point for the sake of the

well-being of the elderly. It uses technology,

information, and other advanced means to improve

the life quality of the elderly by combining the

Chinese concept of elderly care with the organic

deployment of various factors in the elderly care

system among the elderly, society, and government

agencies (Robert, Matjaz 2016).

1.3 Drawbacks of the Traditional

Elderly Care Model

In China, the traditional concept of “caring for the

elderly” is advocated. From these concepts, it is

clear that the elderly in China still largely rely on

their children, especially their sons, for their old age.

But in today’s view, this concept does generate some

undesirable social effects.

1.3.1 Expensive Charges

In rural areas, the problem of old-age care for the

elderly has become a burden for many children.

According to the survey, the charges of elderly care

institutions in rural areas are generally around 2,000

yuan per month, which is a considerable expenditure

in combination with the local price level and wage

level. In this regard, the elderly people generally

choose to age at home, taking turns to live in the

homes of their children, which not only makes the

elderly feel displaced but also causes strife among

siblings.

1.3.2 Unfamiliar Environment

According to a study conducted by the Canadian

Institute of Health Information, they conducted a

follow-up survey of 5,000 elderly people over 65

years old who lived in nursing homes for a long time

and found that 26% of these elderly people suffered

from depression and were mentally and physically

distressed, and 18% experienced extreme emotional

instability. According to the study, these elderly

people living in nursing homes have poor physical

and mental health (Ni 2016).

1.3.3 Isolation of Family Affection

In the traditional Chinese concept, “elders relocate

to the birthplace in their later years”, China is a

country that attaches great importance to family

affection. Placing parents in a nursing home as they

age is tantamount to isolating precious family

affection and causing a certain psychological burden

to the elderly. Moreover, nursing homes generally

lack vitality and have a lot of negative energy.

1.3.4 Elder Abuse

In the past few years, the news of elder abuse by

nursing home caregivers was saddening, which is

largely related to the quality of old-age caregivers.

Generally speaking, old-age nannies are mainly

middle-aged and elderly women in rural areas and

laid-off women workers in cities, who are not highly

educated as well as older, which is simply a model

of the elderly taking care of the elderly. Taking care

of the elderly is very heavy work, which can easily

cause physical and mental pressure to the elderly

caregivers, and the continued accumulation of

negative emotions can easily cause harm to the

elderly being cared for.

1.3.5 Enhanced Loneliness

First, with the advancement of China’s aging

process, the elderly population is growing; second,

with the development of science and information

technology, many elderly groups cannot keep pace

with the trend of the times and are unable to use the

Internet, failing to understand the world of young

groups, thus gradually generating a sense of

loneliness of not being understood or even

neglected; third, influenced by the physical and

psychological characteristics of the elderly

themselves, they are emotionally unstable and can

easily lose control of their emotions when

encountering some unsatisfactory situations (Tong,

Huang 2015).

ICHIH 2022 - International Conference on Health Big Data and Intelligent Healthcare

566

2 METHOD

2.1 Development Trend of Smart

Elderly Care Management Service

System

2.1.1 Elderly Care Is the Core Work of the

Government’s Civil Affairs, and

Governments at All Levels Quickly

Start to Implement It

Compared with other countries, China’s elderly care

model is relatively simple, mainly divided into two

forms: home-based elderly care and social elderly

care. The traditional home-based care model has an

unshakable position in the context of Chinese culture

and thought, but due to the family planning policy

implemented by the state since 1982, many families

have only one child in response to this policy, which

has led to many only-children occupying the

mainstream in the 1980s. Elderly care serves as the

core work of the government’s civil affairs. (Li, Li

2018) Governments at all levels should quickly start

to implement it, and a large amount of capital

investment and nursing staff assistance policies have

been fully implemented.

2.1.2 The Elderly Care Method: Model Is

Upgraded and the Proportion of

Institutional and Community Old-age

Care Increases

Although countries such as Japan and Singapore are

relatively close to China in terms of cultural and

living habits, the difference from my country is that

the elderly in countries such as Japan and Singapore

are mainly borne by the state. This is mainly due to

their small population, the country’s developed

economy, and the state’s ability to provide various

old-age welfare for the elderly.

2.1.3 The Old-age Care Method: Tool Is

Upgraded and More Intelligent

Methods Will Be Added

With the advancement of information technology

and the strong demand for social elderly care, some

high-tech products for the elderly have gradually

appeared in the market. (Zhou 2018) These

high-tech products not only improve the quality of

life in old age, but also provide emotional comfort to

the empty nesters to a certain extent, and new

changes have taken place in the form of

Chinese-style old-age care. The smart elderly care

service model of “system + service + elderly +

terminal” covers a variety of elderly care forms such

as institutional elderly care, home elderly care, and

community daycare. The construction of the smart

elderly care ecosystem has brought new vitality to

the elderly care industry and produced a series of

effects that are beneficial to social progress. To this

end, this ecosystem has been recognized and

concerned by the government, enterprises, and the

public. The elderly group can also enjoy the

convenience brought by the development of science

and technology.

2.1.4 Research on Elderly Care Products:

Innovative Research on Intelligent

Wheelchairs

The control structure of the intelligent wheelchair

mainly consists of three parts: the detection system,

the control system, and the execution system. The

detection system is mainly composed of various

sensors, which can detect the environmental

information of the outside world and the health of

the human body. The control system comprises

STM32F103ZET6 MCU as the main control chip,

ESP8266 module for the Internet of Things (IoT)

information transmission, and GPRS module for

users’ information positioning. The execution

system mainly has the functions of a special

structure of wheelchair, users’ information

transmission, and intelligent obstacle avoidance.

(1) Service functions of the detection system

The detection system mainly includes the

perception of the external environment (such as

intelligent obstacle avoidance, etc.), blood pressure,

and heart rate detection sensors. Through the

detection of human heart rate, the IoT big data is

analyzed to detect users’ physical condition and the

ESP8266 low-power intelligent WIFI chip is used to

connect the data to the cell phone users and users’

relatives, thus, users’ health condition can be viewed

through the cell phone. The detection system also

comprises a voice detection module, and users can

control the moving direction of the wheelchair by

voice, which greatly simplifies users’ tedious

operation steps.

Smart Elderly Care System and Health Management Empowered by Big Data: A Case Study of the Innovation of the Intelligent Wheelchair

Application

567

1 Voice Controller

2 Heart Rate Sensor

3 Main Control Chip

4 Obstacle Avoidance Sensor

5 Blood Pressure Sensor

Figure 1: The detection system of the intelligent wheelchair (self-made).

(2) Control system

The control chip used in this digital intelligent

wheelchair is STM32F103ZET6 MCU as the main

control chip, with ARM as the core, which includes

64KB of SRAM and 512KB of Flash inside, serving

as a MCU with powerful function configuration.

(3) Information transmission system

Since wheelchairs are used by disabled and

elderly people, most of them are in poor physical

condition. In order to keep users and their relatives

informed of their physical health, we collect

information about the user’s physical condition

through sensors and then transmit the information to

the user’s relatives’ cell phones via the Internet

using the ESP8266 chip, so that their families can be

informed of the user’s physical condition in a timely

manner.

1 User Mobile Terminal

2 Master Server of the Corporate

3 Information Transmission Module

4 Main Control Chip

5 Detection System

Figure 2: The control system of the intelligent wheelchair (self-made).

(4) Execution system

The executive system of the digital intelligent

wheelchair includes automatic alarms, night lights,

and numerous motors.

ICHIH 2022 - International Conference on Health Big Data and Intelligent Healthcare

568

1 Alarm Si

nal Sendin

Device

2 Wheelchair Lighting

3 Wheel

4 LCD Display Module

5 Main Control Chi

Figure 3: The execution system of the intelligent wheelchair (self-made).

Figure 4: Appearance of the wheelchair (self-made).

3 RESULTS

3.1 Smart Elderly Care Ecosystem and

Health Management

3.1.1 Strengthening Top-level Design and

Overall Planning

(1) Formulating relevant laws and regulations. At

present, there is not a complete set of laws and

regulations on smart elderly care at the national level

in China. Only If the top-level design can be

improved and sound laws and regulations can be

formulated, can we provide strong support for the

implementation of smart elderly care. With clear

legal provisions, government departments will have

a complete set of implementation policies, and it is

easier to form scale effects.

3.1.2 Accelerating the Construction of

Hardware and Soft Environment

(1) Construction of the basic hardware. In the

previous concept, smart elderly care can be simply

understood as “Internet + elderly care”. Smart

elderly care is a sensor network system and

information platform, which mainly serves the

Smart Elderly Care System and Health Management Empowered by Big Data: A Case Study of the Innovation of the Intelligent Wheelchair

Application

569

elderly who age alone at home, in the community,

and the elderly care institutions, providing fast,

prompt, efficient, low-cost, and intelligent elderly

care services for these objects. Government

departments should continuously improve the

quality and level of network communications to

provide favorable conditions for the implementation

of smart elderly care. For some impoverished and

remote areas, government departments should

allocate some financial funds for the construction of

network facilities.

(2) Construction of cultural environment. For

many elderly people, the concept of smart elderly

care is still relatively vague. This has a lot to do with

their usual living environment and their acceptance

of new knowledge. Therefore, it is necessary to

carry out cultural environment construction.

Administrators can promote smart elderly care by

pulling banners in the community to provide a basic

impression of it and then conduct in-depth

door-to-door publicity to introduce the ecological

system of smart elderly care in detail. In addition to

cultural dissemination for the elderly, it is also

possible to create a certain atmosphere of public

opinion in society.

3.1.3 Enhancing the Construction of Talent

Team

Smart elderly care is inseparable from the Internet,

and young people are the main users of the Internet.

To strengthen the talent team, efforts are required

from the following aspects. The first is to strengthen

ideological construction. It is needed to mobilize

young people to join the smart elderly care from the

ideological aspect. In the view of many young

people, the elderly care industry means frequent

dealings with the elderly, who are more stubborn

and difficult to get along with. It is necessary to

break this concept of young people ideologically.

The second is to improve the quality of the team and

provide them with relevant knowledge of the elderly

care service industry in the process of training. The

third is to boost the retention and training of

newcomers and make them more closely connected

with the company by raising their remuneration and

industry status, thereby improving the level of the

team and enhancing the capacity building of the

team.

4 DISCUSSION

4.1 Sound Modernized Smart Elderly

Care Service System

(1) Introducing PPP mode. In order to provide better

services for the elderly, it is necessary to break the

existing elderly care service model, explore the

market-oriented operation mode, and promote the

transformation of the main body of elderly care

services from unity to diversification. First, on

account of the comprehensive research results, the

program design of the APP is completed based on

the comprehensive consideration of the actual

situation, needs, and complete information of the

elderly, so as to ensure the effect after

implementation. Second, in-depth training of the

talent team enables them to proficiently apply and

master the basic functions of the APP, so that the

promotion of the APP can be carried out more

smoothly. Third, in the process of developing the

APP business, effort should be made to strengthen

team management, guarantee the rationality of the

creation plan, and ensure the smooth implementation

of the creation plan.

(2) Improving the return visit system. In order to

make the implementation of smart elderly care

smoother, relevant departments should improve the

return visit system. It is believed that smart elderly

care and old-age health management are also

services in the final analysis. The satisfaction of the

elderly is extremely important to the development of

the smart elderly care industry(Wei 2019).

5 CONCLUSIONS

According to relevant statistics, China officially

entered an aging society in 1999. China’s

demographic structure is gradually shifting from

growth to stability. It is estimated that the number of

elderly people in China will hit a peak around 2050,

with the proportion of people aged 60 and above

reaching more than 30%. Asian countries such as

China, Japan, and Korea are entering the aging

society at a slower pace than European and

American countries, but the aging process is much

faster than that in other countries. Smart elderly care

has become an inevitable trend in China, and the

integration of smart elderly ecosystems and smart

products in health management has provided

sufficient impetus for the development of elderly

care. Under the new situation, the smart elderly care

ICHIH 2022 - International Conference on Health Big Data and Intelligent Healthcare

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ecosystem presents different new characteristics.

Relevant social and government administrators

should carefully analyze these characteristics and

formulate corresponding management

countermeasures, which is a long process and needs

to be explored step by step.Smart elderly care

contributes to the stable development of China's

society.

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