Allowing IoT Devices Collaboration to Help Elderly in Their Daily Lives

Elderly people have the stereotype of being bad to technology, but they are one of the groups that can benefit the most from recent technological advances. The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the new technologies that aims to facilitate people’s lives, automating tasks or allowing them to be carried out more easily. IoT smart devices provide an increasing number of ways for elderly people to stay active, independent and secure. In addition, the collaboration among smart devices increases the possibilities that the IoT offers, achieving that it can be more exploited. Unfortunately, this collaboration is not easy considering the different types of devices that exist in the market and the absence of communication standards. To mitigate this problem, solutions based on semantic web have shown promise, facilitating interoperability among different devices through the representation and the relationship of their information. In this paper, we propose a system that improves the interoperability among smart devices in the application domains of healthcare and smarthome by using semantic web and ontologies. This solution allows a proactive collaboration among smart devices that elderly people have around them regardless of the technology used, in order to increase their quality of life through more effective and efficient monitoring, and promoting actions associated with their needs.