The domain of elderly healthcare technological platforms is one of
vital importance for the European population. Senior citizens
form a major category which may be excluded in the forthcoming
years from the emerging technological advances occurring in the
fields of communications, information and entertainment. This
growing gap may result in social occlusion, mental decline and
cause feelings of loneliness. Taken also into consideration that
several mobility difficulties and physical impairment occur due to
ageing, several social and financial problems are posed.
Despite the identification of the aforementioned problems and the
serious research efforts focused on independent living solutions,
the proposed frameworks have encountered serious problems.
Among them, maybe the most important is that of the
familiarization difficulties that older people encounter when they
try to use state-of-the-art hardware and software solutions.
Therefore, the acceptance ratio of such approaches remains till
now at low level.
Moreover, there are sub-groups with different needs and
characteristic features among the elderly population. A promising
approach seems to be that of modular or scalable architectures.
These technological approaches offer the ability to form
personalized frameworks in order to satisfy the user needs.
However, particular emphasis should also been given to the user
interfaces which are used for the interaction with the system.
Regarding the fact of facing difficulties with the technological
devices, software developers should adopt the new advances in
the human-computer interaction field in order to get it closer to
the one between two human beings [13]. Therefore, avatars able
to change their facial expressions and to adapt their behavior
according to the user’s mood may be adopted in order to facilitate
elderly people to interact successfully with the technological
platforms utilized to support their independent living.
Furthermore, such systems should deal with every aspect of the
user’s daily life and not only to focus on the tele-monitoring
services which aim to protect him by identifying imminent
hazards or to detect common accidents. Therefore, a potential
framework, except from the aforementioned features, should also
provide innovative entertainment solutions by employing internet
applications such as virtual communities and interactive games.
Moreover, its core goal should be the maintenance of a
satisfactory health state. The Long Lasting Memories (LLM) is an
integrative approach based on the above specifications since it
aims to prevent cognitive impairments such as mild dementia by
utilizing several mental tasks as well as with physical exercises.
However, except from the memory enhancement other cognitive
processes should also be taken into consideration. Among them,
the emotional processing is one of particular importance and
directly related with the overall cognitive performance [29] and
with the person’s ability to interact with other people [13].
Moreover, the use of neurophysiological recordings from both the
central (EEG) and the autonomic (electrodermal activity) nervous
system is expected to provide more reliable indices of the user’s mental health status, while it may form a validation method for
evaluating the performance of the cognitive training provided by
the LLM technological platform