Eliciting caregivers’ needs for remote activity monitoring in early dementia at home

INTRODUCTION: With an increasing prevalence of dementia in the Netherlands from 235.000 in 2008 (1 per 70 inhabitants) up to an estimated 500.000 in 2050 (1 per 34 inhabitants), assisting technologies are needed to support care delivery in the home environment. Remote activity monitoring systems show the potential to support caregivers in providing home care to elderly with dementia by facilitating objective information on the activities of daily living (ADL) of these elderly. The challenge is however to design a system that complies with the needs of the contemplated users of the system: the informal and professional caregivers. The goal of this study is to elicit users’ needs and translate these into a functional description of a remote activity monitoring system.