Framework for developing applications for remote monitoring of people with dementia

Population aging indicates a high prevalence of chronic illnesses, such as Dementia. Dementia is a chronic and incurable disease that affects several areas of brain, including cognitive areas such as memory, attention, language, and problem solving. The effect of these symptoms causes disability and dependency and it is essential to have a continuous monitoring and assistance of the patients. The disease affects not only the people who have it, but also their caregivers and families, leading them to a physical and emotional overload. To overcome this challenge, it is necessary to reduce the need for physical presence of a caregiver, still providing a constant monitoring. In this work, we propose a framework to support the development of applications to monitor people with Dementia based on a pervasive computing infrastructure, using sensors and mobile devices. To validate the proposed framework, we developed a case study focused on dementia caused by Alzheimer´s disease.