Information and communication systems for the assistance of carers based on ACTION

Recent advances in telecommunication technologies allow the design of infor mation and communication systems for people who are caring for others in th e home as family members or as professionals in the health or community cen tres. The present paper analyses and classifies the information flow and ma ps it to an information life cycle, which governs the design of the deploye d hardware, software and the data-structure. This is based on the initial f indings of ACTION (assisting carers using telematics interventions to meet older persons' needs) a European Union funded project. The proposed informa tion architecture discusses different designs such as centralized or decent ralized Web and Client server solutions. A user interface is developed refl ecting the special requirements of the targeted user group, which influence s the functionality and design of the software, data architecture and the i ntegrated communication system using videoconferencing. ACTION has engineer ed a system using plain Web technology based on HTML, extended with JavaScr ipt and ActiveX and a software switch enabling the integration of different types of videoconferencing and other applications providing manufacturer i ndependence.