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ALADDIN, A Technology pLatform for the Assisted Living

of Dementia elDerly INdividuals and Their Carers

Conference Paper · June 2009

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-02481-8_133 · Source: DBLP

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 ALADDIN, A Technology pLatform for the Assisted
Living of Dementia elDerly INdividuals and Their Carers

Konstantinos Perakis, Maria Haritou, and Dimitris Koutsouris

Biomedical Engineering Laboratory, National Technical University of Athens

9 Iroon Politechniou str.
{kperakis,mhari,dkoutsou}@biomed.ntua.gr

Abstract. Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of cortical dementia, is

a degenerative brain disease for which there is no known cure but only a symp-
tomatic therapy. Experts estimate that 26.6 million people worldwide had
Alzheimer in 2006, which would multiply by four by 2050. The scope of the
present paper is to present ALADDIN, Α technology pLatform for the Assisted
living of Dementia elDerly INdividuals and their carers, which aims at support-
ing maintaining health and functional capability, providing the means for the
self-care and the self-management of chronic conditions, providing added value
to the individual, leveraging his/her quality of life, while at the same time sup-
porting the moral and mental upgrade of both the patients and their carers, as
well as enhancing the home-as-care environment through the provision of tools
for frequent, unobtrusive monitoring, via the development of user-friendly ICT
tools.

Keywords: Alzheimer, assisted living, dementia, mental health, quality-of-life,

self-care, self-management.

1 Introduction

Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of cortical dementia, is a degenerative

brain disease for which there is no known cure but only a symptomatic therapy. In its
most common form, it afflicts individuals over 65 years old, although a less prevalent,
familial early-onset form also exists. Experts estimate that 26.6 million people
worldwide had Alzheimer in 2006, which would multiply by four by 2050. The World
Health Organization estimates that globally the total disability adjusted life years
(DALY) for AD and other dementias exceeded eleven million in 2005, with a pro-
jected 3.4% annual increase. Due to the progressive and degenerative nature of the
disease, management of Alzheimer’s and other dementia patients is essential. Delayed
institutionalisation of patients suffering from dementia implies the creation of a more
flexible health provision infrastructure that also increases the inclusion and mobility
of patients who thus feel more independent. However, since the prolonged home-
based care of patients suffering from dementia involves the implication of informal
carers who run the risk of developing depression symptoms themselves, a main issue
in the home-care process of these patients is to relief distress in caregivers. Several

S. Omatu et al. (Eds.): IWANN 2009, Part II, LNCS 5518, pp. 878–881, 2009.
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009
 ALADDIN, A Technology pLatform for the Assisted Living 879

psychosocial approaches have been proposed in this direction. The majority of the
psychosocial interventions include psychoeducation and/or supportive approaches in
order to lead caregivers to appropriately cope with the impact of the disease on cogni-
tive, functional, behavioural and personality changes. Yet, no systems up to date have
been developed that enable the remote monitoring and self-management of this neu-
rodegenerative disease.
An ICT enabled capability to remotely monitor the caregiver’s emotional and psy-
chological status in parallel to the patient’s cognitive and behavioural status, can sig-
nificantly aid towards the early detection of distress to the caregiver and the timely
diagnosis of deterioration symptoms of the patient. The scope of the present paper is
to present ALADDIN, Α technology pLatform for the Assisted living of Dementia
elDerly INdividuals and their carers, which aims at supporting maintaining health and
functional capability, providing the means for the self-care and the self-management
of chronic conditions, providing added value to the individual, leveraging his/her
quality of life, while at the same time supporting the moral and mental upgrade of
both the patients and their carers, as well as enhancing the home-as-care environment
through the provision of tools for frequent, unobtrusive monitoring, via the develop-
ment of user-friendly ICT tools. The focus of this approach therefore is on prevention
and prediction through the early identification of risk factors rather than on medical
interventions after symptoms and diseases have developed.

2 Methodology
The aim of the project is to utilise state-of-the-art in ICT in order to develop an inno-
vative integrated solution for the self-management of patients suffering from demen-
tia, and develop innovative tools to support this procedure. This solution can be
conceived as an integrated platform which will enable distant monitoring of patient
status and facilitate personalised intervention and adaptive care for these patients.
This platform will actually constitute a middleware solution that can be used on top of
existing Hospital Management Systems, so as to increase their efficiency and provide
the means for the formulation of strategies. ALADDIN also aspires to establish a
network for assessing, communicating and appropriately managing information re-
lated to patients suffering from dementia, targeting the improved and sustained qual-
ity of self-management practices. Through these, ALADDIN aims at:
• Supporting and maintaining health, functional capability and cognitive capabil-
ity, through the risk assessment and the early detection of deterioration symp-
toms of patients suffering from dementia and distress signs of their carers. This
includes the tracking of major cognitive, behavioral or physical problems using
intelligent data mining techniques from data collected from diverse resources.
• Providing the means for self-care and self-management of chronic conditions,
through the development of tools for social networking between patients suffer-
ing from dementia as well as between their carers. It also includes development
of educational tools which can provide guidelines for a healthier lifestyle, for in-
stance related to the optimal organization of the patient’s home, dressing or eat-
ing habits.
880 K. Perakis, M. Haritou, and D. Koutsouris

• Providing added value to the individual, leveraging his/her quality of life, while
at the same time supporting the moral and mental upgrade of both the patients
and their carers through personal motivation and empowerment.
• Enhancing the home-as-care environment through the provision of user-friendly
ICT tools for frequent, unobtrusive monitoring
In order to achieve this, the ALADDIN overall system comprises of three main
subsystems:
• The web-based environment which incorporates the social networking utilities
for the communication between patients and carers, as well as educational tools
(e.g. electronic library) to facilitate personal motivation and enhance the notion
of self-management.
• The monitoring tools, which involve the development of smart devices for the
conduction of remote psychometric tests, along with video-conferencing utilities
for the provision of a more thorough clinical image of the patient to the medical
expert. Patient monitoring will include blood pressure measurements, as well as
body weight measurements. An electronic recorder of physical activity will also
be considered.
• The risk assessment and analysis tools, incorporating data mining capabilities,
retrieving information from diverse resources, including psychometric tests,
electronic health records and personal evaluations by medical experts.
The conceptual architecture of ALADDIN is illustrated in the following figure.

Fig. 1. ALADDIN conceptual architecture

3 Expected Results
The project aims to contribute to the advancement of knowledge in the field of mental
health through:
 ALADDIN, A Technology pLatform for the Assisted Living 881

• identifying the data sets needed to assess risks of deterioration of the patient’s
condition as well as of the carer’s condition, including the results of psychomet-
ric tests, personal history, physical examination and more
• validating the tools for self-management of the disease and comparing them with
existing tools and procedures
• validating the effect of social networking utilities on both the patients and their
carers, and assess the implications they may have on each target group.
The validation and assessment of the aforementioned methodologies and tools, will
provide significant input as regards the applicability of remote monitoring and self
assessment of patients suffering from dementia and of their carers, as well as generate
Q&As regarding other feasible approaches to cope among others with:
• Delayed institutionalisation of such patients
• Promote the patient’s cognitive and physical activity in order to delay mental
and physical decline
• Relieving the stress of the carers of such patients and timely recognizing any
possible development of depression symptoms.
• Early detection of behavioural disturbances and their evaluation from the clinical
point of view
• Remote evaluation of the compliance and effectiveness of the dementia-specific
therap, in order to choose the best drug for each dementia phase.
• Remote evaluation of drugs adverse effects and drugs interactions to personalize
the individual therapy
• Collection of drug-related information for pharmacoeconomic purposes

4 Conclusions
ALADDIN aspires to have an immediate impact on the quality of life of patients
suffering from dementia and their carers, allowing for the efficient self-management
of their condition, while also have significant impact on the healthcare system, allow-
ing for the reduction of costs via the delayed institutionalisation of the patients.
ALADDIN can also play a significant role in the formulation of a more effective and
efficient evidence-based home care strategy based on the specificities of patients
suffering from dementia, for enhanced prevention and diagnosis, which will boost the
patients’ independence, mobility and quality of life.

Acknowledgement. ALADDIN consortium comprises of 8 partners, namely the Insti-

tute of Communication & Computer Systems (GR), Fraunhofer FOKUS (DE), the
University of Bologna (IT), The Psychiatric Hospital of Attica (GR), the The National
Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery (UK), Badalona Serveis Assistencials (ES),
ATOS Origin (ES) and Aethia S.r.l. (IT). ALADDIN is funded under the AAL Joint
Programme, call AAL-2008-1.

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