Context-Aware Middleware Solutions for Anytime and Anywhere Emergency Assistance to Elderly People

The growing percentage of elderly people in society calls for novel healthcare support services to enhance elders’ daily life independence in indoor and outdoor environments. Ubiquitous technologies create significant opportunities not only for indoor, but also for outdoor anytime and anywhere assistance. However, outdoor emergency assistance requires that we address several challenging aspects, from elder location tracking and health condition monitoring to the formation of ad hoc assistance groups capable of assisting elders in need of help. This article focuses on the creation and management of outdoor assistance teams and proposes a group management system, AGAPE, that exploits visibility of location and group/user/device profile information as a key principle to trigger and control the team formation and team member interactions required to coordinate emergency activities.