Ray Pradeep, Li Junhua, Ariani Arni, Kapadia Vasvi
Centre For Entrepreneurship, University of Michigan Joint Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.
WHO Collaborating Centre on eHealth, School of Public Health and Community Medicine, UNSW (University of New South Wales), Sydney, Australia.
JMIR Hum Factors. 2017 May 12;4(2):e12. doi: 10.2196/humanfactors.7240.
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.
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.
Our study methodology comprises three separate stages: initial system development, contextual assessment, and comparative case study evaluation.
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.
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.
许多老年人更喜欢独立居家生活。家庭成员提出的主要担忧之一是他们的老年亲属在居家独立生活时的安全与福祉。为解决这一问题，市场上已有辅助技术解决方案。尽管这些解决方案已存在且不断增多，但由于其侵扰性、隐私相关问题、社会污名以及对失去人际互动的恐惧，这类解决方案并不受老年人欢迎。本研究分享了一个数码相框系统的开发经验，该系统利用老年人保持社交联系的愿望，帮助家庭成员了解老年人的福祉状况。
本研究的目的是迭代设计、实现并评估一个基于平板电脑的系统的可用性、用户友好性和可接受性，以检查老年人的福祉状况。
我们的研究方法包括三个独立阶段：初始系统开发、情境评估和比较案例研究评估。
在第一阶段，从老年人那里获取需求以设计一个福祉检查原型。在第二阶段，确定了需要改进之处（如隐私功能）。此外，还提出了其他功能（如用药提醒或饮食提醒），以帮助老年人和医疗服务提供者对老年人进行有效且巧妙的监测。这将通过减少护理人员对老年人住所的探访次数来降低运营成本。在第三阶段，结果凸显了（印度和澳大利亚的用户之间）老年人对这项技术的熟悉程度差异。印度农村变革研究、规划与行动卡利亚尼研究所的一些老年参与者很快接受了这项技术，而少数人拒绝使用该系统。然而，在所有情况下，家庭成员的支持对于他们使用这项技术的意愿至关重要。
该项目有三个主要成果。第一，对一个相框原型进行了老年人测试，以利用社交沟通的益处。第二，该项目帮助我们测试并实施了“银发关怀”模式，即通过居住在该地区的年轻退休人员来支持老年人。最后，该项目有助于将敏捷的三阶段设计方法正式化，以开发针对老年人的信息技术解决方案。此外，该项目为正在进行的一个名为Victoryahome的欧盟项目做出了贡献，该项目涉及5个国家（挪威、瑞典、荷兰、葡萄牙和澳大利亚）的50多个地点，旨在评估远程呈现机器人、可穿戴跌倒探测器和药物分配器在独立生活的老年人中的使用情况。
