TeleCARE: Collaborative virtual elderly support communities

The growing percentage of elderly population imposes an urgent need to develop new approaches to care provision. Integration of a number of technologies such as multi-agent systems, federated information management, safe communications, hypermedia interfaces, rich sensorial environments, and increased intelligence in home appliances represents an important enabling factor for the design and development of virtual elderly support community environments. In this paper, a platform based on mobile agents combined with federated information management mechanisms is introduced as a flexible infrastructure on top of which specialized care services are built.