Participant: A New Concept for Optimally Assisting the Elder People

• Main Authors: Sun, Hong, De Florio, Vincenzo, Gui, Ning, Blondia, Chris
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Subjects: Computer science; Costs; Hospitals; Mathematics; Medical services; Medical simulation; Psychology; Senior citizens; Social network services; Sun
• ISSN: 1063-7125
• DOI: 10.1109/CBMS.2007.82

Elder people are becoming a predominant aspect of our societies. As such, solutions both efficacious and cost-effective need to be sought. The approach pursued so far to solve this problem used to increase the number of people working in the health sector, e.g. doctors, nurses, etc. This increases the costs, which is becoming a big burden for countries. In this paper we propose a new concept in the health management of elder people, which we name as "participant". We propose the "participant" concept to encourage elder people to participate in those group activities that they are able to. Their roles in these activities are not passively requesting help, but actively participating to some healthcare processes. Characteristics of the participant approach are that medical resources are efficiently spared with this model, and the social network of the elder people is kept. A "virtual community" for mutual assistance is set up in this paper, and the simulations demonstrate that the "participant" model could fully utilize the community resources. Furthermore, the psychological health of the elder people will be improved.