INTERACT2005 Special: Home Monitoring and Control for Older People

"Trust and Incidental Interaction: Would you let a Talking Paper Clip run YOUR Home?" at the INTERACT 2005 conference, held in Rome towards the end of last year featured - among others -Andrew Monk of the University of York's Department of Psychology and the Centre for Usable Technology (CUHTec), explaining his answer to the panel question. It may be helpful to refer back to the first article in this series When Interactions happen without You for background.

Monk has specialised in working on ways of enabling older people to continue in their own homes with dignity and control. He presented a stark scenario as part of discussing the difference between intentional and incidental interactions and their consequences:

Intentional -
'I don't feel well I think I will press the button and ask for help.'
Incidental -
'The doctor tells me I am not well enough to carry on living in my house without further help. That box sent a message to him. Apparently I am getting up in the middle of the night a lot and spend too much time in my chair.'

Addressing "Informed consent for the use of 'lifestyle' monitoring telecare", he went on to compare how personal alarm triggers to remote support services could now be reinforced by sensors to detect lifestyle components such as how much we get out of bed, whether we fall over and if we are turning on taps. All this data could be sent out for monitoring, or it could be monitored by the system itself and conclusions could be sent out.

'Activity monitoring is much less readily understandable than pressing the button on a pendent. Does the client know and fully understand:
• what, if any, raw activity data leaves the house and who can view it?
• what inferences are drawn from the data and who gets told? e.g., "you are on the way to the toilet" or "you need more care"
• given that such inferences are always going to be fallible, do the procedures for detecting false positives and false negatives involve the client?' he asked.

Then he made it personal. 'Will I let an activity monitor make suggestions about my care needs? Yes. if I could see what was being recommended to whom, and could make the final decision as to whether it was sent. And will I instruct my children to let an activity monitor make suggestions about my care needs, in the event that I become "a little vague"? Yes, if they could see what was being recommended and would promise to talk to me before making the final decision as to whether it was sent.'

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