Design and Technical Evaluation of an Enhanced Location-Awareness Service Enabler for Spatial Disorientation Management of Elderly With Mild Cognitive Impairment

The progressive ageing of population has turned the mild cognitive impairment (MCI) into a prevalent disease suffered by elderly. Consequently, the spatial disorientation has become a significant problem for older people and their caregivers. The ambient-assisted living applications are offering location-based services for empowering elderly to go outside and encouraging a greater independence. Therefore, this paper describes the design and technical evaluation of a location-awareness service enabler aimed at supporting and managing probable wandering situations of a person with MCI. Through the presence capabilities of the IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) architecture, the service will alert patient´s contacts if a hazardous situation is detected depending on his location. Furthermore, information about the older person´s security areas has been included in the user profile managed by IMS. In doing so, the service enabler introduced contribute to “context-awareness” paradigm allowing the adaptation and personalization of services depending on user´s context and specific conditions or preferences.