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Tablet-Based Well-Being Check for the Elderly: Development and Evaluation of Usability and Acceptability

BACKGROUND: Many elderly people prefer to live at home independently. One of the major concerns raised by the family members is the safety and well-being of their elderly family members when living independently in a home environment. To address this issue, assistive technology solutions have been a...

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Autores principales: Ray, Pradeep, Li, Junhua, Ariani, Arni, Kapadia, Vasvi
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: JMIR Publications 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5446664/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28500017
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/humanfactors.7240
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author Ray, Pradeep
Li, Junhua
Ariani, Arni
Kapadia, Vasvi
author_facet Ray, Pradeep
Li, Junhua
Ariani, Arni
Kapadia, Vasvi
author_sort Ray, Pradeep
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Many elderly people prefer to live at home independently. One of the major concerns raised by the family members is the safety and well-being of their elderly family members when living independently in a home environment. To address this issue, assistive technology solutions have been available in the market. Despite their availability and proliferation, these types of solutions are not popular with the elderly due to their intrusive nature, privacy-related issues, social stigma, and fear of losing human interaction. This study shares the experience in the development of a digital photo frame system that helps family members to check the well-being of the elderly, exploiting their desire to remain socially connected. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to iteratively design, implement, and assess the usability, user friendliness, and acceptability of a tablet-based system to check the well-being of the elderly. METHODS: Our study methodology comprises three separate stages: initial system development, contextual assessment, and comparative case study evaluation. RESULTS: In the first stage, requirements were elicited from the elderly to design a well-being check prototype. In the second stage, areas for improvements (eg, privacy features) were identified. Also, additional features (such as medication prompts or food reminders) were suggested to help aged and health care service providers with effective but subtle monitoring of the elderly. These would lower their operating cost by reducing visits by care providers to the homes of the elderly. In the third stage, the results highlighted the difference (between users in India and Australia) in the levels of familiarity of the elderly with this technology. Some elderly participants at the Kalyani Institute for Study, Planning and Action for Rural Change, India latched onto this technology quickly while a few refused to use the system. However, in all cases, the support of family members was crucial for their willingness to use the technology. CONCLUSIONS: This project has three major outcomes. First, a picture frame prototype was tested with the elderly to leverage the benefits of social communication. Second, the project helped us test and implement the “Silvercare” model for supporting the elderly through young retired people residing in the area. Finally, the project helped formalize the agile three-stage design methodology to develop information technology solutions for the elderly. Also, the project contributed to an ongoing European Union Project called Victoryahome, which involves more than 50 sites across 5 countries (Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, Portugal, and Australia) to assess the use of telepresence robots, wearable fall detectors, and medication dispensers for the elderly living independently.
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spelling pubmed-54466642017-06-06 Tablet-Based Well-Being Check for the Elderly: Development and Evaluation of Usability and Acceptability Ray, Pradeep Li, Junhua Ariani, Arni Kapadia, Vasvi JMIR Hum Factors Original Paper BACKGROUND: Many elderly people prefer to live at home independently. One of the major concerns raised by the family members is the safety and well-being of their elderly family members when living independently in a home environment. To address this issue, assistive technology solutions have been available in the market. Despite their availability and proliferation, these types of solutions are not popular with the elderly due to their intrusive nature, privacy-related issues, social stigma, and fear of losing human interaction. This study shares the experience in the development of a digital photo frame system that helps family members to check the well-being of the elderly, exploiting their desire to remain socially connected. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to iteratively design, implement, and assess the usability, user friendliness, and acceptability of a tablet-based system to check the well-being of the elderly. METHODS: Our study methodology comprises three separate stages: initial system development, contextual assessment, and comparative case study evaluation. RESULTS: In the first stage, requirements were elicited from the elderly to design a well-being check prototype. In the second stage, areas for improvements (eg, privacy features) were identified. Also, additional features (such as medication prompts or food reminders) were suggested to help aged and health care service providers with effective but subtle monitoring of the elderly. These would lower their operating cost by reducing visits by care providers to the homes of the elderly. In the third stage, the results highlighted the difference (between users in India and Australia) in the levels of familiarity of the elderly with this technology. Some elderly participants at the Kalyani Institute for Study, Planning and Action for Rural Change, India latched onto this technology quickly while a few refused to use the system. However, in all cases, the support of family members was crucial for their willingness to use the technology. CONCLUSIONS: This project has three major outcomes. First, a picture frame prototype was tested with the elderly to leverage the benefits of social communication. Second, the project helped us test and implement the “Silvercare” model for supporting the elderly through young retired people residing in the area. Finally, the project helped formalize the agile three-stage design methodology to develop information technology solutions for the elderly. Also, the project contributed to an ongoing European Union Project called Victoryahome, which involves more than 50 sites across 5 countries (Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, Portugal, and Australia) to assess the use of telepresence robots, wearable fall detectors, and medication dispensers for the elderly living independently. JMIR Publications 2017-05-12 /pmc/articles/PMC5446664/ /pubmed/28500017 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/humanfactors.7240 Text en ©Pradeep Ray, Junhua Li, Arni Ariani, Vasvi Kapadia. Originally published in JMIR Human Factors (http://humanfactors.jmir.org), 12.05.2017. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Human Factors, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://humanfactors.jmir.org, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
spellingShingle Original Paper
Ray, Pradeep
Li, Junhua
Ariani, Arni
Kapadia, Vasvi
Tablet-Based Well-Being Check for the Elderly: Development and Evaluation of Usability and Acceptability
title Tablet-Based Well-Being Check for the Elderly: Development and Evaluation of Usability and Acceptability
title_full Tablet-Based Well-Being Check for the Elderly: Development and Evaluation of Usability and Acceptability
title_fullStr Tablet-Based Well-Being Check for the Elderly: Development and Evaluation of Usability and Acceptability
title_full_unstemmed Tablet-Based Well-Being Check for the Elderly: Development and Evaluation of Usability and Acceptability
title_short Tablet-Based Well-Being Check for the Elderly: Development and Evaluation of Usability and Acceptability
title_sort tablet-based well-being check for the elderly: development and evaluation of usability and acceptability
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5446664/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28500017
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/humanfactors.7240
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