Software and knowledge engineering aspects of smart homes applied to health

Smart Home technology offers a viable solution to the increasing needs of the elderly, special needs and home based-healthcare populations. The research to date has largely focused on the development of communication technologies, sensor technologies and intelligent user interfaces. We claim that this technological evolution has not been matched with a step of a similar size on the software counterpart. We particularly focus on the software that emphasizes the intelligent aspects of a Smart Home and the difficulties that arise from the computational analysis of the information collected from a Smart Home. The process of translating information into accurate diagnosis when using non-invasive technology is full of challenges, some of which have been considered in the literature to some extent but as yet without clear landmarks.