Over a period of one week, seven senior citizens tested an upper-arm sensor designed to measure vital data. Although the sensor was very comfortable to wear, there were suggestions for improvements for use with palliative care patients.

A further AAL pilot product was tested. The innovation is intended for palliative care, specifically for end-of-life care in the home environment. The testing is part of the Mobile Palliative Care (MPC) study, which is being sponsored by the Gebert Rüf Stiftung foundation (GRS-50/16). The symptoms of people with specialised palliative care needs are to be monitored by means of an upper-arm sensor for measuring vital data (pulse, oxygen saturation, blood pressure, skin temperature, blood flow and movement) and a symptoms diary. This makes it possible to identify end-of-life medical crises early on, with the aim of helping those in need of care at home for as long as possible and providing the family caregivers with appropriate relief. For example, symptoms can be alleviated before an acute medical crisis occurs that makes hospital admission necessary. The focus is on people with specialised palliative care needs and on their family members accompanying them in the final phase before death.

As part of the LivingLab 65+ project, seven senior citizens (two women and five men) tested this upper-arm sensor and the symptoms diary over a period of one week. The aim was to assess and optimise their user-friendliness prior to making them available for people with specialised palliative care needs. Owing to the concrete responses, the products were able to be optimised, and they can now be tested in the next phase of the project with the vulnerable group of palliative care patients and their family members.

In 2017, a first living lab was set up. The aim of the AALiving Lab@home project was to assess the actual needs of senior citizens with respect to assistance systems and to test a technical-assistance system.

More than 20 private households were able to be recruited, 15 of which then tested a technical-assistance system in the actual home environment for a period of three months. The average age of the project participants was 75 (age range of between 66 and 88). Seven participants were women and eight were men. Seven persons lived alone in a household; half of the households were located in a rural area. During the recruitment process, it became apparent that it is difficult to approach more fragile or vulnerable population groups and ask them to participate in a real-world test involving their everyday life at home.

The needs assessment conducted in advance showed that test subjects, most of whom were still very active and healthy, currently had little need for technical assistance in their day-to-day. One problem that was mentioned was the fact that while a great number of technology options are available, an overview of them is lacking.

A variety of sensors were tested, all of which connected wirelessly to a control centre. The tests showed that the individual components did not work flawlessly. There were several false alarms, and the programmed reminder functions were not always reliable. The test subjects also criticised the fact that the various sensors require different batteries, and that the messages do not remain on the control centre screen long enough to be confirmed. Further analyses are currently ongoing.

The findings of the first living lab project show that in order to test technical-assistance systems with elderly people at home, a pre-evaluation in a “true” laboratory is necessary. For this purpose, the FHS St.Gallen University of Applied Sciences opened the AGE-Lab at the Startfeld Innovation Centre in St. Gallen. The AGE-Lab and the living labs make it possible for manufacturers of AAL technologies to test their solutions before launching them on the market.

In the past 12 years, more than EUR 1 billion has been invested for research and development of assistance systems for elderly people in their daily lives (Active Assisted Living, or AAL). “Despite high investments, many of these innovations have so far met with little success on the market,” says Urs Guggenbühl, who, together with Beda Meienberger, heads the Competence Centre for AAL at the FHS St.Gallen. He says that there are many possible reasons that might prevent the dissemination of these solutions, such as inadequate operability of the technical solutions, stigmatisation as a result of unsuitable design, or high purchase and operating costs.

Urs Guggenbühl notes that the LivingLab 65+ concept at the FHS St.Gallen provides a decisive advantage here: “As we are including elderly people in testing AAL solutions in their private household environment, the systems can be developed and modified in accordance with actual needs and desires.”

Living lab method tested

In an initial project, AALiving Lab@home, a typical AAL system available on the market was tested in 20 private residences of elderly people over a period of six months. After having been given a detailed introduction about the AAL system, the test subjects were asked about the usability and acceptance of the installed AAL system three times during the testing phase by means of interviews and questionnaires. At the same time, the most important technical incidents were documented and registered. Since the project involved the first implementation of a living lab exclusively in the home environment, one of its objectives was to scrutinise and improve the living lab method, including with respect to the sustainable operation of our LivingLab 65+ project in the future.

The project showed that a technical product should first be pre-tested before being installed in the households. Initial functional tests should be conducted in a laboratory and, if necessary, in two to three households. Thereafter, the findings gained in this way should be funnelled into an improvement loop (industry partners). After making adjustments, field testing can be conducted with a larger number of private households. This phased approach is advisable because it enables a system’s significant malfunctions to be corrected in advance so that field testing can be conducted as efficiently as possible with a larger number of households. The research questions and hypotheses must be established by the project team prior to the start of field testing, and the three levels of data collection (qualitative, quantitative and automated data collection) must be coordinated in order to be able to obtain optimal results and a coherent picture. Based on these findings, the AALiving Lab@home process was readjusted, and the technical AGE-Lab was established for the purpose of pre-evaluating and preparing the technology for field testing.

Testing room, development room, research room

The AGE-Lab is located at the Startfeld Innovation Centre at Lerchenfeldstrasse 3, 9014 St. Gallen. The Innovation Centre offers a highly creative environment for inspiration and the development of the AGE-Lab, a number of ICT start-ups whose expertise can be extremely useful for the AGE-Lab, a co-working space, conference rooms and a kitchen for common use, as well as high-speed Internet. The AGE-Lab primarily serves as the testing room for the operation of the LivingLab 65+ project. In addition, the AGE-Lab also serves as the development room for developing new AAL technologies/solutions, as the demonstration room for presenting potential applications, and as the research room for collecting and analysing living lab data. The Startfeld Innovation Centre also offers a platform for finding a home for innovative start-ups and SMEs in the area of AAL.

As part of the national innovation network AGE-NT and the associated Active Assisted Living Cluster, as well as in connection with the current project “IBH LivingLab AAL”, the LivingLab 65+ project is to be expanded throughout Switzerland and in the area around Lake Constance (Germany and Austria) to include approximately 150 residences of elderly people (i.e. private households and supervised forms of living in institutions). In addition to various research projects in the area of technical assistance for elderly people at home and in daily life, the LivingLab 65+ project also plans to test marketable AAL products and services in the actual, everyday living environment of elderly people.

Over a period of three months, 15 private households of senior citizens participated in home testing of a new technical-assistance system from the area of Active Assisted Living (AAL). Various suggestions for improvements were derived from the test results.

A living lab makes it possible to test technical-assistance systems in the actual everyday home environment of senior citizens over an extended period of time, in contrast to the traditional testing of technical innovations, which takes place in an artificial laboratory situation for a limited period of time. This kind of living lab, whose target group were people aged 65 and above, was set up for the first time in Switzerland as part of the AALiving Lab@home project, which was sponsored by the Gebert Rüf Stiftung foundation.

A total of 15 private households tested a technical-assistance system from the area of sensor technology in their homes for a period of three months. Testing was accompanied from a social-sciences perspective. The focus was on issues of operability, user-friendliness and technical acceptance. Various suggestions for improvements were derived from the test results. For example, the wireless range was insufficient in a home spanning several floors, or the light of the LED cord was felt to be too bright. In terms of technical acceptance, several factors emerged that either promoted or detracted from acceptance. Those that promoted acceptance included clear features, ease of operation, the product’s discernible added value, affordable purchase and maintenance costs, and access to customer service. Factors that detracted from acceptance were highly complex operation, malfunctioning and stigmatisation.

The project advanced the thematic concentration and focus on the topic of AAL at the FHS St.Gallen. As a result, the concept has been further differentiated, and other projects on this topic have been applied for and approved.