Healthcare at Home

Within health and elderly care, we see a clear trend for people to live and rehabilitate at home as much and as long as possible. This requires technology to adapt the home to any limitations and remote monitoring of these people with tele-monitoring applications, e.g., in the form of wearables.

HomeLab allows such technologies and services to be tested out in realistic conditions and with real end users. The infrastructure is adapted so that older people, or people with disabilities, can easily stay there: a special care room is provided on the ground floor, the bathrooms are adapted, the kitchen island can be adjusted in height, and the house includes an elevator to go to the second floor or the basement.

An example project that was tested in HomeLab is the imec.icon project ROBO-CURE in which different areas of expertise were brought together to guide children with type II diabetes more personally and efficiently. During the first weeks after their diagnosis, they receive help from a robot that teaches them the diabetes treatments and collects data with which the medical team can refine the therapy.