Kutz Daniel, Shankar Kalpana, Connelly Kay
School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, United States.
J Med Internet Res. 2013 May 14;15(6):e83. doi: 10.2196/jmir.2124.
A recent trend in personal health and wellness management is the development of computerized applications or information and communication technologies (ICTs) that support behavioral change, aid the management of chronic conditions, or help an individual manage their wellness and engage in a healthier lifestyle.
To understand how individuals across 3 generations (young, middle-aged, and older) think about the design and use of collaborative health and wellness management technologies and what roles these could take in their lives.
Face-to-face semistructured interviews, paper prototype systems, and video skits were used to assess how individuals from 3 age cohorts (young: 18-25 years; middle-aged: 35-50 years; and older: ≥65 years) conceptualize the role that health and wellness computing could take in their lives.
A total of 21 participants in the 3 age cohorts took part (young: n=7; middle-aged: n=7; and older: n=7). Young adults expected to be able to actively manage the presentation of their health-related information. Middle-aged adults had more nuanced expectations that reflect their engagement with work and other life activities. Older adults questioned the sharing of health information with a larger audience, although they saw the value in 1-way sharing between family members or providing aggregated information.
Our findings inform our suggestions for improving the design of future collaborative health and wellness applications that target specific age groups. We recommend that collaborative ICT health applications targeting young adults should integrate with existing social networking sites, whereas those targeting middle-aged and older adults should support small social networks that rely on intimate personal relationships. Systems that target middle-aged adults should support episodic needs, such as time-sensitive, perhaps intermittent, goal setting. They should also have a low barrier to entry, allowing individuals who do not normally engage with the Internet to participate with the application for the specific purposes of health engagement. Collaborative ICT health applications targeting older adults should allow discreet 1-way sharing, and also support sharing of information in aggregate with others' data. These systems should also provide mechanisms to preselect recipients of different kinds of data, or to easily direct specific information to individuals in real time.
个人健康与保健管理的一个最新趋势是开发支持行为改变、辅助慢性病管理或帮助个人管理自身健康并采用更健康生活方式的计算机化应用程序或信息通信技术（ICT）。
了解三代人（年轻人、中年人、老年人）如何看待协作式健康与保健管理技术的设计与使用，以及这些技术在他们生活中可能发挥的作用。
采用面对面半结构化访谈、纸质原型系统和视频短剧，评估三个年龄组（年轻人：18 - 25岁；中年人：35 - 50岁；老年人：≥65岁）的个体如何构想健康与保健计算在他们生活中可能发挥的作用。
三个年龄组共有21名参与者（年轻人：n = 7；中年人：n = 7；老年人：n = 7）。年轻人期望能够积极管理与其健康相关信息的呈现。中年人的期望更为细致入微，反映出他们对工作和其他生活活动的参与情况。老年人对与更广泛受众分享健康信息表示质疑，不过他们认可家庭成员之间单向分享或提供汇总信息的价值。
我们的研究结果为改进针对特定年龄组的未来协作式健康与保健应用程序的设计提供了建议。我们建议，针对年轻人的协作式ICT健康应用程序应与现有的社交网站整合，而针对中年人和老年人的应用程序应支持依赖亲密人际关系的小型社交网络。针对中年人的系统应支持特定需求，如设定对时间敏感、可能是间歇性的目标。它们还应具有较低的使用门槛，使通常不接触互联网的个人能够为了健康参与的特定目的参与该应用程序。针对老年人的协作式ICT健康应用程序应允许谨慎的单向分享，还应支持将信息与他人数据汇总后分享。这些系统还应提供机制，以便预先选择不同类型数据的接收者，或轻松实时地将特定信息直接发送给个人。
