Home Care Systems for the Management of Patients With Mental Disorders

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of the various aspects involved in the development of a home care system for the management of dementia, based on the experience of ALADDIN implementation. The ALADDIN platform aims to provide a trustworthy and reliable solution supporting patients and their informal carers in the management of the disease from home. Based on a set of monitoring parameters and measuring scales feeding a reconfigurable Event Detection mechanism used for Risk Assessment and Analysis, the system aims to early detect symptoms predicting decline, avoid emergencies and secondary effects and thus prolong the period that patients can remain safely cared at home. Informal carers are also monitored by the system whereas additional features supporting networking, education and cognitive stimulation are also integrated along with decision support tools for the clinicians. It is an open, secure, interoperable, integrated IT-solution designed according to Service Oriented Architecture principles and credible methodologies for patient follow-up, risk detection and adaptive care.