Role Of Digital Health Wearables In The Wellbeing And Quality Of Life Of Older People And Carers

The number of adults aged 65 and over has increased by 2% across Europe in the past 15 years, and in Northern Ireland by 22% between 2003-2013. The proportion of the population in this age group is projected to increase by 63% to just under 0.5 million by 2033 – which will be a quarter of the population in Northern Ireland. Given Northern Ireland’s Active Ageing Strategy (2015-2021), there is an increasing focus on encouraging physical activity as we get older to preserve mobility and motor skills, and to enjoy the benefits of living longer and to minimise health problems associated with ageing. Over the last two years, we have been investigating the role of wearable activity tracking technologies in self-monitoring of activity by people aged over 55. Example technologies include activity trackers from Fitbit, Garmin and Samsung, and smart watches. Typically, these devices record steps walked, sleep patterns, calories expended and heart rate. Based on empirical investigations, this policy paper describes the benefits of activity monitors for people aged over 55 for self-monitoring of physical activity, for adopting healthy lifestyles, and for increasing or maintaining physical activity as a way to avoid high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, and other medical conditions associated with weight or lower physical activity. It outlines the role of activity trackers in post-operative monitoring of mobility during rehabilitation, in caring, and for possible use of the data for diagnosis and medical interventions. It then discusses the challenges for adoption of these technologies, given currently, off-the-shelf devices are designed and calibrated for use by physically fit (typically young active people) with unrealistic fitness targets for the older generation

Navigating the challenges of digital health innovation: considerations and solutions in developing online and smartphone application based interventions for mental health disorders

This article presents an analysis of challenges and considerations when developing digital mental health innovations. Recommendations include collaborative working between clinicians, researchers, industry and service users in order to successfully navigate challenges and to ensure e-therapies are engaging, acceptable, evidence based, scalable and sustainable

Leveraging Users’ Trust and Reputation in Social Networks

In on line communities, where there is a huge number of users that interact under anonymous identities, it has been observed that e-word of mouth is a very powerful influence tool. So far, this technology is well known in on-line marketplaces, such as Amazon, eBay or travel based platforms like Tripadvisor or Booking. However, these trust based approach can be leverage in other scenarios from e-democracy to trust based recommendations on e-health context and e-learning systems. The purpose of this contribution is to analyse the main existing trust and reputation mechanisms and to point out new research challenges that needs to be accomplished with the objective of fully exploiting these systems in real world on-line communities.The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support from the EU project H2020-MSCA-IF-2016- DeciTrustNET-746398 and FEDER funds provided in the Spanish project TIN2016-75850-P

Privacy Attitudes among Early Adopters of Emerging Health Technologies.

IntroductionAdvances in health technology such as genome sequencing and wearable sensors now allow for the collection of highly granular personal health data from individuals. It is unclear how people think about privacy in the context of these emerging health technologies. An open question is whether early adopters of these advances conceptualize privacy in different ways than non-early adopters.PurposeThis study sought to understand privacy attitudes of early adopters of emerging health technologies.MethodsTranscripts from in-depth, semi-structured interviews with early adopters of genome sequencing and health devices and apps were analyzed with a focus on participant attitudes and perceptions of privacy. Themes were extracted using inductive content analysis.ResultsAlthough interviewees were willing to share personal data to support scientific advancements, they still expressed concerns, as well as uncertainty about who has access to their data, and for what purpose. In short, they were not dismissive of privacy risks. Key privacy-related findings are organized into four themes as follows: first, personal data privacy; second, control over personal information; third, concerns about discrimination; and fourth, contributing personal data to science.ConclusionEarly adopters of emerging health technologies appear to have more complex and nuanced conceptions of privacy than might be expected based on their adoption of personal health technologies and participation in open science. Early adopters also voiced uncertainty about the privacy implications of their decisions to use new technologies and share their data for research. Though not representative of the general public, studies of early adopters can provide important insights into evolving attitudes toward privacy in the context of emerging health technologies and personal health data research

Vector Approach to Context Data Reliability

Context-aware processing is a part of intensively developed ubiquitous computing andmobile systems. Surrounding awareness is used to introduce new functions and solutions. Somecategories of the context data are taken for security purposes in the context-aware security implementations.This kind of data has to meet some conditions since it is used for decision making aboutsecurity mechanisms adaptation and configuration. One of these conditions is reliability. The paperpresents vector approach to context data reliability assessment introducing mechanism which allowsto assess reliability parameters for further usage in context aware security processing. The followingaspects of the context data are taken into account: interface reliability, data quality, data source reliabilityand security level. Introducing reliability metric for context data may be beneficial to othermechanisms which utilize context data. The vector form of reliability may be even more flexible thanthe scalar value

Aquilis: Using Contextual Integrity for Privacy Protection on Mobile Devices

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Future bathroom: A study of user-centred design principles affecting usability, safety and satisfaction in bathrooms for people living with disabilities

Research and development work relating to assistive technology 2010-11 (Department of Health) Presented to Parliament pursuant to Section 22 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 197