Self-Care Technologies in HCI: Trends, Tensions, and Opportunities

Many studies show that self-care technologies can support patients with chronic conditions and their carers in understanding the ill body and increasing control of their condition. However, many of these studies have largely privileged a medical perspective and thus overlooked how patients and carers integrate self-care into their daily lives and mediate their conditions through technology. In this review, we focus on how patients and carers use and experience self-care technology through a Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) lens. We analyse studies of self-care published in key HCI journals and conferences using the Grounded Theory Literature Review (GTLR) method and identify research trends and design tensions. We then draw out opportunities for advancing HCI research in self-care, namely, focusing further on patients' everyday life experience, considering existing collaborations in self-care, and increasing the influence on medical research and practice around self-care technology

mHealth in Practice

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. There has recently been an explosion of interest around the application of mobile communication technologies to support health initiatives in developing countries (mHealth). As a result, there is a need to promote and share rigorous research for better informed policy, programming, and investment. There are, however, few platforms for the exchange of information and proven practice between practitioners and researchers. The subtopic of prevention, well-being, and health promotion within mHealth is particularly ripe for deeper exploration. While many reports tout the potential of mobiles to influence behaviour change for health, there is limited knowledge about what works (and what does not work), and about how to evaluate current and future programs. This is a focused edited volume with contributions from leading researchers and practitioners to identify best practices in using mobile technologies to promote healthy behaviours (and reduce unhealthy ones) in resource-constrained settings with a special focus on developing countries. This topic is inherently interdisciplinary. Though the opportunities to leverage mobile phones for health are new, the challenges confronting researchers and practitioners are well-established and theoretically complex, with roots in decades of work on mediated behaviour change campaigns and theories

mHealth in Practice

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. There has recently been an explosion of interest around the application of mobile communication technologies to support health initiatives in developing countries (mHealth). As a result, there is a need to promote and share rigorous research for better informed policy, programming, and investment. There are, however, few platforms for the exchange of information and proven practice between practitioners and researchers. The subtopic of prevention, well-being, and health promotion within mHealth is particularly ripe for deeper exploration. While many reports tout the potential of mobiles to influence behaviour change for health, there is limited knowledge about what works (and what does not work), and about how to evaluate current and future programs. This is a focused edited volume with contributions from leading researchers and practitioners to identify best practices in using mobile technologies to promote healthy behaviours (and reduce unhealthy ones) in resource-constrained settings with a special focus on developing countries. This topic is inherently interdisciplinary. Though the opportunities to leverage mobile phones for health are new, the challenges confronting researchers and practitioners are well-established and theoretically complex, with roots in decades of work on mediated behaviour change campaigns and theories

P5 eHealth: An Agenda for the Health Technologies of the Future

This open access volume focuses on the development of a P5 eHealth, or better, a methodological resource for developing the health technologies of the future, based on patients’ personal characteristics and needs as the fundamental guidelines for design. It provides practical guidelines and evidence based examples on how to design, implement, use and elevate new technologies for healthcare to support the management of incurable, chronic conditions. The volume further discusses the criticalities of eHealth, why it is difficult to employ eHealth from an organizational point of view or why patients do not always accept the technology, and how eHealth interventions can be improved in the future. By dealing with the state-of-the-art in eHealth technologies, this volume is of great interest to researchers in the field of physical and mental healthcare, psychologists, stakeholders and policymakers as well as technology developers working in the healthcare sector

The few touch digital diabetes diary : user-involved design of mobile self-help tools for peoplewith diabetes

Paper number 2, 4, 5 and 7 are not available in Munin, due to publishers' restrictions: 2. Årsand E, and Demiris G.: "User-Centered Methods for Designing Patient-Centric Self-Help Tools", Informatics for Health and Social Care, 2008 Vol. 33, No. 3, Pages 158-169 (Informa Healthcare). Available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17538150802457562 4. Årsand E, Olsen OA, Varmedal R, Mortensen W, and Hartvigsen G.: "A System for Monitoring Physical Activity Data Among People with Type 2 Diabetes", pages 173-178 in S.K. Andersen, et.al. (eds.) "eHealth Beyond the Horizon - Get IT There", Proceedings of MIE2008, Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, Volume 136, May 2008, ISBN: 978-1-58603-864-9 5. Årsand E, Tufano JT, Ralston J, and Hjortdahl P.: "Designing Mobile Dietary Management Support Technologies for People with Diabetes", Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare, 2008 Volume 14, Number 7, Pp. 329-332 (Royal Society of Medicine Press). Available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1258/jtt.2008.007001 7. Årsand E, Walseth OA, Andersson N, Fernando R, Granberg O, Bellika JG, and Hartvigsen G.: "Using Blood Glucose Data as an Indicator for Epidemic Disease Outbreaks", pages 199-204 in R. Engelbrecht et.al. (eds.): "Connecting Medical Informatics and Bio-Informatics", Proceedings of MIE2005, Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, Volume 116, August 2005, ISBN: 978-1-58603-549-5. Check availabilityParadoxically, the technological revolution that has created a vast health problem due to a drastic change in lifestyle also holds great potential for individuals to take better care of their own health. The first consequence is not addressed in this dissertation, but the second represents the focus of the work presented, namely utilizing ICT to support self-management of individual health challenges. As long as only 35% of the patients in Norway achieve the International Diabetes Federation‟s goal for blood glucose (HbA1c), actions and activities to improve blood glucose control and related factors are needed. The presented work focuses on the development and integration of alternative sensor systems for blood glucose and physical activity, and a fast and effortless method for recording food habits. Various user-interface concepts running on a mobile terminal constitute a digital diabetes diary, and the total concept is referred to as the “Few Touch application”. The overall aim of this PhD project is to generate knowledge about how a mobile tool can be designed for supporting lifestyle changes among people with diabetes. Applying technologies and methods from the informatics field has contributed to improved insight into this issue. Conversely, addressing the concrete use cases for people with diabetes has resulted in the achievement of ICT designs that have been appreciated by the cohorts involved. Cooperation with three different groups of patients with diabetes over several years and various methods and theories founded in computer science, medical informatics, and telemedicine have been combined in design and research on patient-oriented aids. The blood glucose Bluetooth adapter, the step counter, and the nutrition habit registration system that have been developed were all novel and to my knowledge unique designs at the time they were first tested, and this still applies to the latter two. Whether it can be claimed that the total concept presented, the Few Touch application, will increase quality of life, is up to future research and large-scale tests of the system to answer. However, results from the Type 2 diabetes half-year study showed that several of the participants did adjust their medication, food habits and/or physical activity due to use of the application

Current trends and future perspectives of stroke management through integrating health care team and nanodrug delivery strategy

Stroke is accounted as the second-most mortality and adult disability factor in worldwide, while causes the bleeding promptly and lifetime consequences. The employed functional recovery after stroke is highly variable, allowing to deliver proper interventions to the right stroke patient at a specific time. Accordingly, the multidisciplinary nursing team, and the administrated drugs are major key-building-blocks to enhance stroke treatment efficiency. Regarding the healthcare team, adequate continuum of care have been declared as an integral part of the treatment process from the pre-hospital, in-hospital, to acute post-discharge phases. As a curative perspective, drugs administration is also vital in surviving at the early step and reducing the probability of disabilities in later. In this regard, nanotechnology-based medicinal strategy is exorbitantly burgeoning. In this review, we have highlighted the effectiveness of current clinical care considered by nursing teams to treat stroke. Also, the advancement of drugs through synthesis of miniaturized nanodrug formations relating stroke treatment is remarked. Finally, the remained challenges toward standardizing the healthcare team and minimizing the nanodrugs downsides are discussed. The findings ensure that future works on normalizing the healthcare nursing teams integrated with artificial intelligence technology, as well as advancing the operative nanodrugs can provide value-based stroke cares

Toward a Discourse Community for Telemedicine: A Domain Analytic View of Published Scholarship

In the past 20 years, the use of telemedicine has increased, with telemedicine programs increasingly being conducted through the Internet and ISDN technologies. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the discourse community of telemedicine. This study examined the published literature on telemedicine as it pertains to quality of care, defined as correct diagnosis and treatment (Bynum and Irwin 2011). Content analysis and bibliometrics were conducted on the scholarly discourse, and the most prominent authors and journals were documented to paint and depict the epistemological map of the discourse community of telemedicine. A taxonomy based on grounded research of scholarly literature was developed and validated against other existing taxonomies. Telemedicine has been found to increase the quality and access of health care and decrease health care costs (Heinzelmann, Williams, Lugn and Kvedar 2005 and Wootton and Craig 1999). Patients in rural areas where there is no specialist or patients who find it difficult to get to a doctor’s office benefit from telemedicine. Little research thus far has examined scholarly journals in order to aggregate and analyze the prevalent issues in the discourse community of telemedicine. The purpose of this dissertation is to empiricallydocument the prominent topics and issues in telemedicine by examining the related published scholarly discourse of telemedicine during a snapshot in time. This study contributes to the field of telemedicine by offering a comprehensive taxonomy of the leading authors and journals in telemedicine, and informs clinicians, librarians and other stakeholders, including those who may want to implement telemedicine in their institution, about issues telemedicine