It is always on your mind: Experiences and perceptions of falling of older people and their carers and the potential of a mobile falls detection device

Copyright © 2013 Veronika Williams et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Background. Falls and fear of falling present a major risk to older people as both can affect their quality of life and independence. Mobile assistive technologies (AT) fall detection devices may maximise the potential for older people to live independently for as long as possible within their own homes by facilitating early detection of falls. Aims. To explore the experiences and perceptions of older people and their carers as to the potential of a mobile falls detection AT device. Methods. Nine focus groups with 47 participants including both older people with a range of health conditions and their carers. Interviews were audio recorded, transcribed verbatim, and thematically analysed. Results. Four key themes were identified relating to participants’ experiences and perceptions of falling and the potential impact of a mobile falls detector: cause of falling, falling as everyday vulnerability, the environmental context of falling, and regaining confidence and independence by having a mobile falls detector. Conclusion. The perceived benefits of a mobile falls detector may differ between older people and their carers. The experience of falling has to be taken into account when designing mobile assistive technology devices as these may influence perceptions of such devices and how older people utilise them.European Commissio

Accessibility of Health Data Representations for Older Adults: Challenges and Opportunities for Design

Health data of consumer off-the-shelf wearable devices is often conveyed to users through visual data representations and analyses. However, this is not always accessible to people with disabilities or older people due to low vision, cognitive impairments or literacy issues. Due to trade-offs between aesthetics predominance or information overload, real-time user feedback may not be conveyed easily from sensor devices through visual cues like graphs and texts. These difficulties may hinder critical data understanding. Additional auditory and tactile feedback can also provide immediate and accessible cues from these wearable devices, but it is necessary to understand existing data representation limitations initially. To avoid higher cognitive and visual overload, auditory and haptic cues can be designed to complement, replace or reinforce visual cues. In this paper, we outline the challenges in existing data representation and the necessary evidence to enhance the accessibility of health information from personal sensing devices used to monitor health parameters such as blood pressure, sleep, activity, heart rate and more. By creating innovative and inclusive user feedback, users will likely want to engage and interact with new devices and their own data

E-anamnesis: a clinical observation electronic platform for emergency departments

Dissertação de mestrado em Engenharia BiomédicaOne of the reasons for the increased number of visits to emergency departments is the primary health care inability to handle urgent needs and provide all the health services needed to assess complex conditions. A significant amount of these visits are due to the abnormal flow of patients whose clinical condition is of low severity and could ideally be resolved with self-care and primary health care. The crowding in emergency departments causes operational and logistical problems and has undesirable consequences for patients, health professionals and hospitals. Delays in treatment interventions and increased mortality, medical errors and waiting times are just a phew examples of critical consequences that can occur, resulting in a significant barrier to the quality of health care delivery. With the advances in technology, several institutions have found in self-service an alternative for the patient’s collection of health information autonomously. These devices can be used by low clinical severity patients (with the blue, green or yellow bracelets from Manchester triage) to reduce waiting time in the emergency departments. This dissertation proposes a technological solution to improve both the time and quality of the anamnesis procedure performed by medical staff in the emergency department. The introduction of a self-service kiosk in the emergency department waiting room will make it possible to quickly and intuitively collect the patient’s past medical history, usual medication, main complaint symptoms and vital signs. Subsequently, this data will be made available to the physician before each clinical observation. The hypothesis considered is that by providing a selective, structured and uniform anamnesis information’s presentation of each patient, medical staff observation can proceed much faster and accurately, focusing on the confirmation of the most relevant aspects. The primary purpose of this solution is to reduce the period of clinical observation and thus improve the response capacity of the emergency department with the same resources.Uma das razões para o aumento do número de visitas ao serviço de urgência é a incapacidade dos cuidados de saúde primários de lidar com necessidades urgentes e de fornecer todos os serviços de saúde necessários para avaliar condições complexas. A maioria destas visitas deve-se ao fluxo anormal de doentes cuja condição clínica é de baixa gravidade que poderiam, idealmente, ser resolvidos com recurso ao auto-cuidado e aos cuidados de saúde primários. A lotação nos serviços de urgência provoca problemas operacionais e logísticos, apresentando consequências indesejáveis para os doentes, profissionais de saúde e hospitais. Atrasos nas intervenções de tratamento e o aumento da mortalidade, dos erros médicos e dos tempos de espera são apenas alguns exemplos de consequências críticas que podem ocorrer, resultando numa barreira significativa a qualidade da prestação de cuidados de saúde. Com os avanços da tecnologia, diversas instituições, encontraram nos serviços de auto-atendimento uma alternativa para a recolha autónoma de informações de saúde do doente. Estes dispositivos, poderão ser usados por doentes de baixa gravidade clínica (com pulseira azul, verde ou amarela da triagem de Manchester) nos serviços de urgência com vista à redução do tempo de espera. Esta dissertação propõe uma solução tecnológica para melhorar tanto o tempo como a qualidade do procedimento de anamnese realizado pelos médicos no serviço de urgência. A introdução de um quiosque de auto-atendimento na sala de espera do serviço de urgência permitirá recolher de forma rápida e intuitiva a história clínica, medicação habitual, sintomas da queixa principal e sinais vitais do doente. Posteriormente estes dados serão colocados à disposição do médico antes de cada observação clínica. A hipótese considerada é que ao fornecer uma apresentação seletiva, estruturada e uniforme da informação de anamnese de cada doente, a observação dos médicos possa proceder de forma muito mais rápida e precisa, concentrando-se na confirmação dos aspectos mais relevantes. O principal objectivo desta solução é reduzir o período de observação clínica e assim melhorar a capacidade de resposta do serviço de urgência com os mesmos recursos

Design revolutions: IASDR 2019 Conference Proceedings. Volume 3: People

In September 2019 Manchester School of Art at Manchester Metropolitan University was honoured to host the bi-annual conference of the International Association of Societies of Design Research (IASDR) under the unifying theme of DESIGN REVOLUTIONS. This was the first time the conference had been held in the UK. Through key research themes across nine conference tracks – Change, Learning, Living, Making, People, Technology, Thinking, Value and Voices – the conference opened up compelling, meaningful and radical dialogue of the role of design in addressing societal and organisational challenges. This Volume 3 includes papers from People track of the conference

Changing environmental behaviors through smartphone-based augmented experiences

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestrado em Engenharia de InformáticaThe use of persuasive technologies can induce changes in attitudes or behaviours, even in individuals that other strategies of persuasion can not reach effectively. In addition, this type of technology can be applied in numerous areas such as health, education, finance, e-business, among others. Although persuasion can be seen as something negative, being used to serve the interests of the persuader rather than the interests of the persuaded, this work aims to achieve a common and shared goal: to change people's behaviour towards the environment. A significant part of the population is still not aware of the sustainability problems that our planet is facing, so it is important to inform people about the theme while persuading them to change their behaviour and acquire proenvironmental attitudes. In this dissertation, work was conducted to alert citizens to this issue in a fun and immersive way using mobile devices, more specifically smartphones, and augmented reality technology that was used to create an environmental scanner. This scanner provided the user with informative insight about the surrounding environment, while highlighting the environmental threats. In addition to augmented reality, pro-environmental actions were positively reinforced using a reward system and a virtual character that interacted and motivated the user. A form of rapid spread through social networks was also created, allowing the persuasive effect to quickly reach a large number of users. Finally was performed a study to assess the success of the work done in changing behaviour towards environmental issues, and to study the influence of augmented reality and positive reinforcement in the changing of behaviours and acquisition of pro-environmental attitudes

Supporting working carers of people living with dementia: The potential of technologies for combining work and care

Background: Carers of a person with dementia are faced with unique challenges when combining paid work and unpaid care. Technology can address some of these challenges. This PhD project aims to explore and identify technologies which have the potential to support working dementia carers and to map these technologies onto the work-care reconciliation challenges they express. Methods: Scoping reviews and a participatory design approach were used to explore A) the problem, and B) the solution. Semi-structured interviews with 16 working dementia carers helped to identify what work-care-reconciliation challenges carers wanted solutions for. A comprehensive review of the technology landscape then identified technologies – currently available and emerging – which could address these work-care reconciliation challenges. Technology experts from academia, industry, and social care commission validated the findings. Finally, a custom-built website was used to get feedback from those intended to use these technologies. Findings: Work-care reconciliation challenges carers wanted solutions for included i) care management, ii) attending appointments, iii) entertainment and companionship, iv) psychological and psychosocial stress, v) safety concerns, vi) accessing information, and vii) personal care. A total of 83 technologies, deemed to address the work-care reconciliation challenges carers had identified, emerged from the technology landscape review. These were mapped onto carers' work-care reconciliation challenges (technology map). Most of these technologies were thought to be useful by participants of the online technology evaluation. However, technologies’ effects on other stakeholders, especially people with dementia, were important considerations. Conclusion/implications for practice: The technology map can be used as a reference by working dementia carers and those aiming to support them (i.e., their employers, carer or dementia support organisations, and local authority adult social care departments) to identify technological solutions to their challenges. Furthermore, it could be used by technology providers as a guide for further research and development

Design and semantics of form and movement (DeSForM 2006)

Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM) grew from applied research exploring emerging design methods and practices to support new generation product and interface design. The products and interfaces are concerned with: the context of ubiquitous computing and ambient technologies and the need for greater empathy in the pre-programmed behaviour of the ‘machines’ that populate our lives. Such explorative research in the CfDR has been led by Young, supported by Kyffin, Visiting Professor from Philips Design and sponsored by Philips Design over a period of four years (research funding £87k). DeSForM1 was the first of a series of three conferences that enable the presentation and debate of international work within this field: • 1st European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM1), Baltic, Gateshead, 2005, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. • 2nd European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM2), Evoluon, Eindhoven, 2006, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. • 3rd European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM3), New Design School Building, Newcastle, 2007, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. Philips sponsorship of practice-based enquiry led to research by three teams of research students over three years and on-going sponsorship of research through the Northumbria University Design and Innovation Laboratory (nuDIL). Young has been invited on the steering panel of the UK Thinking Digital Conference concerning the latest developments in digital and media technologies. Informed by this research is the work of PhD student Yukie Nakano who examines new technologies in relation to eco-design textiles