Design Method of Remote Monitoring Service for Elderly Considering Community Characteristics

With the rapid progress of the declining birthrate and aging population in Japan, expectations for efforts to grasp the behavior of elderly by using human resources or information technologies called “Remote Monitoring Service” have increased. There are many products and researches on remote monitoring service, but they are often made from a technology-centric viewpoint of “How to acquire the situation of elderly”. However, when people actually design remote monitoring service, it is necessary to consider complex characteristics of the target community. This paper proposes a method that can design remote monitoring service by considering such characteristics. For achieving this objective, this paper utilizes the “Systems Thinking” approach that can handle the whole elements in the system. In the proposed method, a previous research called “Remote Monitoring Service Modeling” is regarded as Morphological Matrix (MM) which is one of the techniques of Systems Thinking approach, and evaluation of remote monitoring service design can be conducted by assigning characteristic values from the viewpoints of cost, quality and acceptability. Stakeholder Value Network describes the relationship of stakeholders in the system, and its analysis has a role in creating MM. By using the proposed method, Pareto optimal solutions of remote monitoring service design can be derived from possible options. The effectiveness of the proposed method is evaluated by applying method to the case of Japanese local government (Tamaki Town, Mie prefecture) which actually tries to implement remote monitoring service.