Out-of-the-Box Deployment to Support Research on In-Home Care of Alzheimer's Patients

COVID-19 has caused many disruptions in conducting smart health research. Both in-lab sessions and in-home deployments had to be delayed or canceled because in-person meetings were no longer allowed. Our research project on “in-home monitoring with personalized recommendations to reduce the stress of caregivers of Alzheimer’s patients” was affected. To enable continued research without any person-to-person contact, we created an out-of-the-box deployment solution. The solution is multifaceted and deals with everything from technical adjustments, deployment documentation, EMA additions, additional monitoring software, use of videos, Zoom and TeamViewer, budget changes, new logistics, and changes to IRBs. This article briefly describes the purpose and design of the original system and then articulates the necessitated changes. We also provide lessons learned and an initial evaluation of the effectiveness of the solutions after the changes. The evaluation surveys the opinions of seven people that assembled, initialized, and deployed our system in home environments. We believe that the various solutions we developed can be applied to other similar projects, and will be helpful to new projects even when personal contact returns.