AAL Information based Services and Care Integration Alexandra Queirós 1 , Sandro Carvalho 2 , João Pavão 2 and Nelson Pacheco da Rocha 1 1 Health Sciences School, IEETA,University of Aveiro, Campo Universitário de Santiago, Aveiro, Portugal 2 Escola de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Quinta de Prados, Vila Real, Portugal Keywords: Ambient Assisted Living, Integrated Care, Personalized Care, Electronic Health Record, Personal Health Record, Social Health Record. Abstract: Health and social care systems are currently faced with a set of challenges that continually require more sophisticated responses. The integration of health, social and informal care and the care personalization are important issues in the organization of the care systems. This article aims to propose an information architecture for Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) environments that can contribute to integrated and personalized care. 1 INTRODUCTION Information Technologies (IT) in health care have gained widespread usage. IT benefits include availability and accessibility of vital information, more effective and efficient treatments, reduction of the number of redundant procedures, lower risks for the patients, greater cost savings and, therefore, improved quality of care. In individual terms, IT based services empower the citizens to exercise control over their own health, by facilitating them the access to knowledge and adequate services and, consequently, allowing informed choices within the available options. This paper discusses the possible contribution of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) in the integration and personalization of care services. The paper also presents an information architecture able to integrate both user-generated and AAL services-generated data with institutional health and social care repositories of information. 2 CHALLENGES The challenges faced today by health and social care systems are theirs sustainability: with public budgets at strain the systems can not afford to do less because demands and expectations are increasing, namely due to the demographic ageing. Therefore, both effectiveness and efficiency of the care systems should be increased (Codagnone, 2009). Given the current pressure resulting from the cost of the health and social care systems, the interactions between different care organizations have gained significant relevance (Dias and Queirós, 2010): the availability of effective and efficient care services requires the involvement and coordination of multiple stakeholders. Therefore, the care systems must guarantee to the citizens’ access to the type and intensity of care they actually need at the most appropriate time and place, depending on their specific situation. This is the aim of integrated care, which can contribute to a more personalized care and that must not be confused with continued care. Continued care generally presumes that care is provided for long periods of time and that there are services that are delivered in addition to those ones which are provided within the walls of the care organizations. The provision of continued care requires the involvement of a diversity of professionals and organizations and the existence of coordination mechanisms, generally in the context of multidisciplinary team work (Dias and Queirós, 2010). The provision of health care services is based on scientifically optimized standard procedures oriented to diagnosis-based needs and centred on diseases (Rigby, 2012). However, there are a range of activities that are essential for the maintenance of individuals’ quality of life and that are part of the normal living of every citizen. Such activities include daily life activities (e.g. tasks at home, 403 Queirós A., Carvalho S., Pavão J. and Pacheco da Rocha N.. AAL Information based Services and Care Integration. DOI: 10.5220/0004326004030406 In Proceedings of the International Conference on Health Informatics (HEALTHINF-2013), pages 403-406 ISBN: 978-989-8565-37-2 Copyright c  2013 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)