Enhancing layers of care house with assistive technology for distributed caregiving

Care homes for persons with dementia are being designed so that caregivers can easily observe and therefore respond to the needs of people with dementia. However, the layout of care homes can then become overly restrictive for its residents, for example, by not supporting intermediate spaces where people can come across one another and start a conversation. We report a case study where a video monitoring system was deployed into a purpose-built care home to help caregivers to observe activities in the blind spots pertaining to the layout. We had carried out a study prior to and subsequent to the deployment of video monitoring in order to understand its impact. We found that both the caregivers and the residents benefitted from video monitoring, provided it is deployed sensitively. Furthermore, the deployment of video monitoring enables the design of more beneficial physical layouts. The deployment of video monitoring goes along with the physical layout of care homes.