Active and Healthy Aging: The Role of a Proactive Information Assistant Embedded on TV

Population ageing has become a general issue due to technological and scientific progress that has increased citizens' life expectancy. Because of this, it is essential to develop strategies to promote senior people's physical and mental well-being. Local events (such as popular festivals in the residential area and other types of gatherings), which allow seniors to interact with other people socially, are a potential contribution to improving their quality of life. The dissemination of those events is, therefore, essential. Furthermore, to ensure that older people have a good quality of life, it is inevitable to provide them with tools that allow them to frequently self-monitor their health and medication intake status easily since it is in the third have that we observe a more considerable prevalence of physical and cognitive diseases. However, transmitting this information to older adults, who may have limitations in digital skills, requires efficient approaches. Since the television is widely used among seniors, it may be an adequate device for implementing an advanced information system integrated with a customisable proactive personal assistant like the ProSeniorTV system addressed in this paper. This article presents the results generated by a focus group session with the collaboration of 6 older adults to evaluate a set of usage scenarios idealised for ProSeniorTV. The feedback from the focus group participants showed that such a system would be beneficial in promoting seniors' participation in social activities held in their area of residence and helping them remember to take their medication.