Jules Degila

By Thierry Edoh and Jules Degila

Hospitals and nursing care homes are facing severe challenges such as lack of skilled workforces and cost explosion, among others. Especially, the western healthcare systems are headed over a cliff. German nursing care houses, hospitals, and government are working hard on solutions to overcome the crucial workforce’s crises. Therefore, they are planning to hire nursing-workforces from abroad. They would also like to motivate families with monetary incentives, such as tax-reduction, if they can care for their elderly and/or dementia family members at home. However, caring for a sick person at home is challenging for a working family member especially in the case the patient requests around-the-clock nursing care since elderly with cognitive impairments, people with physical disabilities, and people with dementia need (medical) assistance around the clock. The present study reveals an increasing tendency for family members to care for their sick family member at home despite the challenges and issues faced like the lack of time to intensively care for the sick person due to today’s family lifestyle, challenging employment market, financial constraints, etc. The study reported in this chapter aims at providing family members willing to care for their sick member at home as long as possible with smart home automation enabled Patient@Home solution to effectively and efficiently care for their sick member despite working full time. People living in nursing care homes can also take benefit of the proposed system. Evidence shows the potential of the proposed system to effectively and efficiently assist in caring for people requesting nursing care around the clock. Though the health-related quality of life is positively impacted, patient’s satisfaction is increased (better quality of experience).

Part of the book: Internet of Things (IoT) for Automated and Smart Applications