Designing a gamified social platform for people living with dementia and their live-in family caregivers

In the current paper, a social gamified platform for people living with dementia and their live-in family caregivers, integrating a broader diagnostic approach and interactive interventions is presented. The CAREGIVERSPRO-MMD (C-MMD) platform constitutes a support tool for the patient and the informal caregiver - also referred to as the dyad - that strengthens self-care, and builds community capacity and engagement at the point of care. The platform is implemented to improve social collaboration, adherence to treatment guidelines through gamification, recognition of progress indicators and measures to guide management of patients with dementia, and strategies and tools to improve treatment interventions and medication adherence. Moreover, particular attention was provided on guidelines, considerations and user requirements for the design of a User-Centered Design (UCD) platform. The design of the platform has been based on a deep understanding of users, tasks and contexts in order to improve platform usability, and provide adaptive and intuitive User Interfaces with high accessibility. In this paper, the architecture and services of the C-MMD platform are presented, and specifically the gamification aspects. © 2018 Association for Computing Machinery.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Intelligent Pillbox: Evaluating the User Perceptions of Elderly People

Pillboxes represent a good solution in the adherence to medical prescriptions for elderly people. They are built taking into account aspects as ergonomic criteria, several doses of medicine and another consideration about their design. Therefore, we have presented a pillbox prototype which helps elderly people in taking all doses of medicine. This paper presents the next step towards a useful device, here it is presented an empirical evaluation of the “Intelligent Pillbox” by using the Technology Acceptance Method to evaluate the ease of use perception, usefulness perception and intention to use in the future of this new technological device. The evaluation consists in a quasi-experiment which was performed by 45 elderly people, who attend to institutions focused on work with this priority group in several integration activities. Results show positive perceptions of this solution that indicates the intention to use in the future and provide us insights about possible improvements

Fall Prediction and Prevention Systems: Recent Trends, Challenges, and Future Research Directions.

Fall prediction is a multifaceted problem that involves complex interactions between physiological, behavioral, and environmental factors. Existing fall detection and prediction systems mainly focus on physiological factors such as gait, vision, and cognition, and do not address the multifactorial nature of falls. In addition, these systems lack efficient user interfaces and feedback for preventing future falls. Recent advances in internet of things (IoT) and mobile technologies offer ample opportunities for integrating contextual information about patient behavior and environment along with physiological health data for predicting falls. This article reviews the state-of-the-art in fall detection and prediction systems. It also describes the challenges, limitations, and future directions in the design and implementation of effective fall prediction and prevention systems

Balvia ecosystems product placement

Mestrado em IPB-ESTGTechnological advancement in medicine enabled humankind to surpass many difficulties and cure countless diseases. These solutions improve the quality of life and well-being for mankind. Non-adherence to prescribed medication is a problematic that decrease the overall quality of life and health, while increasing the costs of health care. It can have many reasons and the consequences can be dire. The project “Automatic pills dispenser device - SelfMed” aims to provide a solution for that problem. The project SelfMed envisions the creation of a machine that can store, organize and dispense medication in the proper quantity and time, alerting the user of the medicine and facilitating remote access to data. It is a smart and independent machine capable of communication with other systems, and with many security features. This work is in the scope of project SelfMed, further develops the pill dispenser prototype, creates a new scope for the solution, design the business base for the commercialization of the products. The solution being developed is an ecosystem that includes an automatic pill dispenser device, user interfaces, cloud system, a smartwatch application, and a service.O avanço tecnológico na medicina permitiu à humanidade superar muitas dificuldades e curar inúmeras doenças. Essas soluções melhoram a qualidade de vida e o bem-estar da humanidade. A não adesão às prescrições médicas é uma problemática que diminui a qualidade geral de vida e saúde, ao mesmo tempo que aumenta os custos dos cuidados de saúde. Pode ter muitas razões e as consequências podem ser terríveis. O projeto “Dispensador Automático de Comprimidos - SelfMed” visa fornecer uma solução para esse problema. O projeto SelfMed prevê a criação de uma máquina capaz de armazenar, organizar e dispensar medicamentos na quantidade e tempo adequados, alertando o utilizador sobre o medicamento e facilitando o acesso remoto aos dados. É uma máquina inteligente e independente capaz de se comunicar com outros sistemas e com muitos recursos de segurança. Este trabalho está no escopo do projeto SelfMed, desenvolve ainda mais o protótipo do dispensador de comprimidos, cria um novo âmbito para a solução, e desenha a base de negócios para a comercialização dos produtos. A solução que está a ser desenvolvida é um ecossistema que inclui um dispositivo, dispensador automático de comprimidos, interfaces de utilizador, sistema em nuvem, um aplicativo smartwatch e um serviço