Health "Smart" Home: Information Technology for Patients at Home

This article reviews the emerging concept of health "Smart" homes (HSH) and its potential through the use of telemedical information systems and communication technologies. HSH systems provide health care services for people with special needs who wish to remain independent and living in their own home. The large diversity of needs in a home-based patient population requires complex technology. Meeting these needs technically requires the use of a distributed approach and the combination of many hardware and software techniques. We also describe the wide scope of new information, communication, and data-acquisition technologies used in home health care. We offer an introduction to the HSH concept in terms of technical, economic, and human requirements. Examples of HSH projects are presented, including a short description of our own smart home and telehealthcare information system project.