EMMA Family
Welcome to Emma Family
In UK, for example more than a quarter of people aged between 65-74, and nearly half of those aged 75 or more, live alone compared with just 12 per cent of those aged between 25-46. Loneliness is a big issue and can lead to suicide. Loneliness is another issue for independent elder life. According to National statistic 2004, the majorities of elders feel lonely and lack of social activities. Three people over 65 commit suicide every day due to loneliness. Although we have public organizations which provide volunteers for the local communities, they are not available 24h and cannot satisfy the need for friendship. The rise in the number of older people living alone, which has been particularly rapid in the last ten years. Across Scotland as a whole, people living alone accounted for 29% of households in 1991, but 34% in 2004. More than a third of people in Scotland now live on their own (Registrar General’s household estimates for 2004 (August 2005)). Between 1991 and 2001 the numbers of people aged 85 and over who lived alone increased from 30,000 to 44,000, mainly reflecting a rise in numbers in the age group but also a rise in the proportion living alone (ISD Scotland, 2003) The EMMA website is designed to keep the elder connected to their families, public organizations and useful services. The EMMA network integrates an SMS system for event updates, a geo-tagging feature to find the nearest services and friends, integration with other social networks and integration with the EMMA sensor. EMMA is meant to be designed as an interface between users in need of help and care givers. Our users are elders typically more than 65 years old. Care givers are specialist that can come in any form such as: doctors, psychologist, volunteers, and public organizations. Users can interact in a peer to peer fashion sharing information and creating content on the website although the focus of the system is mainly in finding support and mutual help in a strictly geographic manner. Users can build their network of friends either by connecting with their relatives/family members but also looking for geographically near friends or communities. Users can access a wide range of services in real time or offline mode: In EMMA family: · User friendly, suitable for people aged over 65 and few computer skills required · Mutual support network (24/7 service) · News about local events and news provided for free · Personal profile management: an online calendar which remembers the user of important events · Users can register and use EMMA family, even if they do not have a computer by using our EMMA’s SMS service · Online diagnosis tools for medical advice and therapeutic games to enhance memory spatial and temporal memory against early dementia
