AquaTime - the smart Hydration Assistant

AquaTime is a new IoT-enabled solution to monitor and motivate elderly people and provide an overview for caretakers of the hydration status of elderly citizens. The solution is aimed at the public healthcare sector. The objective of this project was to define, develop and test a specific version of AquaTime that fulfills most wishes and requirements of the eldercare sector in Extremadura, Spain. To find out the needs and context of the elders, we carried out qualitative research with 8 elders and 7 caretakers and health professionals in Spain. Due to the COVID19 pandemic, the interviews were carried out remotely. This will be useful so that our consortium partners can fine-tune the design of the IoT solution to fit a wider European population For the elders, we found that the product needs to be engrained into their daily routines. Specifically, elders reproduce routines and markers of time and space that become the structure of their daily lives. These markers act as reminders of things they have to do, including drinking. They associate medical looking devices with disease and negative perceptions. As such, we recommend that the solution needs to be designed to blend into the domestic environment and away from medical-looking devices. It must also have an interface that reminds elders of analogic objects they are familiar with and reminds them not only how much they need to drink, but how much they already drank. We translated the research insights into recommendations to improve the product design. We also designed an onboarding website that allows the caretakers to setup the product for the elders. The product is currently undergoing a pilot testing in Extremadura in a network of elderly care homes to see if the product performs well in real, continued use conditions.

The extensive analysis of users' needs and context, as well as the perspectives from medical personnel and caretakers needs by means of interviews and observation translate into adapting better the product to the end user's context of use, to facilitate adoption and setup of the product as well as adherence to usage. This, if successful, will lead to a reduction in dehydration problems, an increase in the quality of life of users as well as a reduced risk of illnesses. Currently there is a pilot ongoing in Extremadura to assess the long term usage in a larger sample of end users in a real context. Heveas and Medbroker are currently working to test the technical aspects of the product (connectivity, network stability and roaming). A business case development is currently underway. A website has also been designed with a fully online onboarding experience. The partners are working also in publishing and communicating the results in a workshop and a conference in early 2021.

The project consists of three phases: 1. During phase 1 we will perform primary research to understand how the different types of end-users presently work with or handle “dehydration” and what kind of tools they need to make their hydration efforts easier and of increased quality. These insights will be translated into a product specification that technical product developers can understand and work accordingly to adapt better the existing Aquatime solution. 2. During phase 2 we will transform the Product Specifications into a prototype of the solution that can be manufactured in a low-volume series and tested by end-users under real-life conditions. 3. During phase 3 we will test the developed solution under real-life conditions with real end-users. The collected insights will be used to make an initial business case on the impact of the solution for the end-user.