Telehealth Assessment in the Elderly Using the 4M\u27s

COVID-19 has accelerated an already urgent need for telehealth in the United States. While health care systems have been providing telehealth for years, the number of providers and patients who need to participate in telehealth has ballooned overnight. Though telehealth has been in use for a while, the geriatric population seems to be disadvantaged, especially those who reside in rural settings. Due to increased COVID 19 cases among the elderly population in North Dakota, the Geriatric Workforce Enhancement Program (GWEP) allocated a grant to the University of North Dakota to promote telehealth in the elderly receiving homecare services in rural and urban areas of North Dakota. The project aim was to promote the use of telehealth to reduce the risk of exposure of Covid 19 among the elderly populations in rural and urban areas in North Dakota. Upon completion of the project, the advanced practitioners will have used video monitoring technologies to complete geriatric modified assessments consisting of medication, mobility, mentation, and what matters most (4Ms)

The consumption of protein-rich foods in older adults: An exploratory focus group study

Objective: Many older adults consume inadequate protein for their needs. This study explored the factors associated with the consumption of high-protein foods in older adults. Methods: Participants over the age of 65 years (n = 28) took part in 1 of 4 focus group discussions on meat, fish, eggs, dairy products, nuts, and pulses. Discussions were audio taped, transcribed, and analyzed using thematic analysis. Results: Numerous and various reasons for the consumption and non-consumption of high-protein foods were reported. Many of these reasons result from reductions in chemosensory, dental and physical abilities, and changes in living situation in the older population, and have impact specifically on high-protein foods because of their often hard, perishable and need-to-be-cooked nature, and high cost. Conclusions and Implications: Further work is required to establish the importance of each of thesereasons in relation to protein intakes, to prioritize those of likely greatest impact for increasing intakes. © 2013 Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior

Problems for Vulnerable Road Users in the Netherlands

INTRODUCTION In the Netherlands pedestrian and pedal cycle travel are important transport modes for the population. However, given the particularly vulnerable nature of these modes of transport, pedestrians and cyclists are involved in a large number of accidents and suffer a particularly high proportion of the fatalities and serious injuries. Technical measures to improve safety and efficiency focus almost exclusively on motorized traffic, disregarding the needs of the non-motorized traffic participants. In order to determine how technical measures, such as Road Tr&c Informatics (RTI) applications, can be used to increase the safety and mobility of pedestrians and cyclists, more information is needed about the causes of accidents to these groups. This report deals with a first analysis of the problems of cyclists and pedestrians in the Netherlands. Similar reports are being produced for Britain and Sweden which together will serve as a basic information source from which decisions can be made about which type of measures have potential to improve the situation of vulnerable road users. This report examines the nature and causes of accidents involving vulnerable road users (VRU's), their mobility patterns and their risk. It is intended to serve as a tool in subsequent stages of this project, and thus is not a general survey of safety and mobility problems for vulnerable road users, but rather a review of those issues that are related to the RTI measures envisaged by the project. The project is aimed at improving VRU safety and mobility both directly, through the enhancement of signalized junctions and pedestrian crossings, and indirectly, through the creation of a model of the traffic system incorporating vulnerable road users. It is intended that this model will permit the routing and guidance of motorized vehicles in such a way as to enhance VRU safety and reduce VRU annoyance and delay from traffic. Both the direct and the indirect measures envisaged will only be relevant to VRU safety and mobility on main roads in urban areas; they are unlikely to be applicable to residential streets or minor roads unless these have substantial VRU flows. The report therefore concentrates (in so far as existing information permits) on VRU safety and mobility on main roads and on VRU use of facilities that are intended to be upgraded through the planned RTI measures. The report covers both the national level for the Netherlands (about 14.5 million inhabitants) and the local level for the City of Groningen (about 160,000 inhabitants). Section 2 of this report seeks to define a number of the terms which are used throughout, and provides a basis for comparison between the findings from this report and those for Sweden and Britain. Section 3 identifies the sources of information from which the analyses of accident and mobility data have been derived. Sections 4 and 5 identify the safety and mobility situations of vulnerable road users at the national and local levels respectively. Section 6 examines the risk to pedestrians and cyclists, and finally Section 7 provides some conclusions and recommendations for RTI-measures

Assistive robotics: research challenges and ethics education initiatives

Assistive robotics is a fast growing field aimed at helping healthcarers in hospitals, rehabilitation centers and nursery homes, as well as empowering people with reduced mobility at home, so that they can autonomously fulfill their daily living activities. The need to function in dynamic human-centered environments poses new research challenges: robotic assistants need to have friendly interfaces, be highly adaptable and customizable, very compliant and intrinsically safe to people, as well as able to handle deformable materials. Besides technical challenges, assistive robotics raises also ethical defies, which have led to the emergence of a new discipline: Roboethics. Several institutions are developing regulations and standards, and many ethics education initiatives include contents on human-robot interaction and human dignity in assistive situations. In this paper, the state of the art in assistive robotics is briefly reviewed, and educational materials from a university course on Ethics in Social Robotics and AI focusing on the assistive context are presented.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Training senior employees for ICT skills enhancement through “refocus”: The EUROPEAN project

Declining fertility rates and the ageing of the European population represents a major challenge to many governments within the European Union (EU) and its neighbouring realms, in the present and for the forthcoming decades. The increasing ageing workforce within several United Kingdom (UK) and the EU private and public organisations is an evident manisfestation. The workforce comprised of senior employees are often seen by employers as less mobile and flexible with low performance and thus, less able to deal with the rapid changes occurring in their organisations; as rapid developments require flexible and responsive workforce. The mobility of the senior employees is therefore a topical theme in the workforce market. The necessary knowledge and skills required for the senior employees can be taught through various Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) related training systems within an organisation. However, it appears that the development of training systems required for senior employees need careful investigation into the requirements of the problem situation. The reason is that the design of senior employees training systems should be more carefully planned, as literature indicates that it is significantly time consuming and is harder to train senior employees on ICT applications. This paper presents a European project – REFOCUS (oldeR Employees training on inFOrmation and CommUnication technologieS), an initaitive undertaken by the EU for enhancing the ICT skills of the ageing workforce. This project also aims at designing a new electronic learning (e-Learning) method that focuses on the needs of senior employees of 40 years of age and over – who can become a strategic resource for the European economy

Vibration as an exercise modality: how it may work, and what its potential might be

Whilst exposure to vibration is traditionally regarded as perilous, recent research has focussed on potential benefits. Here, the physical principles of forced oscillations are discussed in relation to vibration as an exercise modality. Acute physiological responses to isolated tendon and muscle vibration and to whole body vibration exercise are reviewed, as well as the training effects upon the musculature, bone mineral density and posture. Possible applications in sports and medicine are discussed. Evidence suggests that acute vibration exercise seems to elicit a specific warm-up effect, and that vibration training seems to improve muscle power, although the potential benefits over traditional forms of resistive exercise are still unclear. Vibration training also seems to improve balance in sub-populations prone to fall, such as frail elderly people. Moreover, literature suggests that vibration is beneficial to reduce chronic lower back pain and other types of pain. Other future indications are perceivable

Driving into the sunset: Supporting cognitive functioning in older drivers

Copyright @ 2011 Mark S. Young and David Bunce - This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.The rise in the aging driver population presents society with a significant challenge-how to maintain safety and mobility on the roads. On the one hand, older drivers pose a higher risk of an at-fault accident on a mile-for-mile basis; on the other hand, independent mobility is a significant marker of quality of life in aging. In this paper, we review the respective literatures on cognitive neuropsychology and ergonomics to suggest a previously unexplored synergy between these two fields. We argue that this conceptual overlap can form the basis for future solutions to what has been called "the older driver problem." Such solutions could be found in a range of emerging driver assistance technologies offered by vehicle manufacturers, which have the potential to compensate for the specific cognitive decrements associated with aging that are related to driving.Support was received from the Leverhulme Trust, UK