Older adults living independently at home receive an occasional assist from new technology, but tomorrow's seniors can expect a lot more to make life safer or easier.

		More information More information and registration, on a space-available basis, may be obtained through conference manager Maureen Hewko at 412-647-9541.

More health monitoring, medication assistance, mobility help, computer links to medical professionals, automatic reminders of necessary tasks, and other aids still germinating in science labs will be designed to help people through their daily lives.

The scope of the future assistance is the focus of the "Technology for Life and Living" conference Friday, hosted by the University of Pittsburgh's Institute on Aging at the Holiday Inn Select in Oakland. The day of seminars will feature speakers from local universities, businesses and research organizations. They'll discuss innovations already available to help the elderly, others that are under development, and still more that sound good as concepts now but are a long way from coming to market.

Conference organizers say the use of in-home, quality-of-life technology is a natural, but slower, outgrowth of the scientific advances such as laser surgery that have improved acute medical care.

"Using technology to keep people independent in their own communities is just emerging now," said Shikha Iyengar, the institute's administrative director. "Baby boomers are going to want to live in our own homes for as long as possible, and we're going to use technology to help us do that."

Officials from Pitt and Carnegie Mellon University are joining forces on the conference, just as they have on certain research that pairs interest in advanced computer work and elder needs. In one of those, which has been known as the Nursebot project, researchers are trying to develop a robot that could be a full-time, in-home monitor that could also assist with various tasks.

Judith T. Matthews, a Pitt assistant professor of nursing who has been involved in the Nursebot work, said that walkers used by frail people might someday issue audible reminders that it's time to use them for a walk, instead of being ignored. The use of sensors in an older person's home could determine if they are inactive and in potential trouble, triggering an alarm or notification to emergency officials.

"There are a number of projects, both in the academic setting and business arena, that involve collaboration among people from diverse backgrounds trying to address these very functional issues of day-to-day life, which disproportionately affect older people," Ms. Matthews said.

Jim Osborn, executive director of CMU's medical robotics center, said an example already taking place is the monitoring of heart rate or blood pressure that is sometimes ordered for patients wearing special devices in their homes. The information might be recorded by a computer on an ongoing basis, or through a phone line when the patient makes a call to a certain number. The "tele-health" or "tele-medicine" provides more information about patients, without consuming the time of medical professionals.

"If you look forward in time, we're going to be able to do an awful lot of monitoring of that type, and with sensors both worn and built into the environment," Mr. Osborn said.

In the future, for instance, a computerized camera measuring a person's gait might detect a deterioration of abilities, doing it with more expertise than would the human eye. The computer might notify the individual's doctor about the change immediately, rather than there being a delay until the person's annual physical.

Still to be determined in all of these possibilities is how costly they would be, who would pay for them and how all of the additional information computers might generate will be processed efficiently.

Those questions and many more will likely be discussed at the conference, which runs from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and is geared toward professionals and students from both health care and age-related fields. The cost is $10 for students and senior citizens, and $50 for others.