Revisiting the Technology Challenges and Proposing Enhancements in Ambient Assisted Living for the Elderly

Abstract

Several social and technical trends support the elderly’s desire to live independently in their preferred environment, despite their increasing medical needs, and enhance their quality of life at home. Ambient-assisted living (AAL) has the capabilities to support the elderly and to decrease their dependency on formal or informal caregivers. We provide a review of the technological challenges that were identified as inhibiting factors in the past decade and then present recent technological advances, e.g., cloud computing, machine learning, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things. We also fill the gap in the current literature in regard to specific AAL solutions and propose fourth-generation AAL technology design. We find that most informal caregivers are family members who are medically untrained and that the use of advanced analytical processes on AAL-generated data could significantly increase symptom identification. We also present the implications and remaining challenges along with recommendations for future research.