75 research outputs found
Ageing and Technology: Perspectives from the Social Sciences
The booming increase of the senior population has become a social phenomenon and a challenge to our societies, and technological advances have undoubtedly contributed to improve the lives of elderly citizens in numerous aspects. In current debates on technology, however, the "human factor" is often largely ignored. The ageing individual is rather seen as a malfunctioning machine whose deficiencies must be diagnosed or as a set of limitations to be overcome by means of technological devices. This volume aims at focusing on the perspective of human beings deriving from the development and use of technology: this change of perspective - taking the human being and not technology first - may help us to become more sensitive to the ambivalences involved in the interaction between humans and technology, as well as to adapt technologies to the people that created the need for its existence, thus contributing to improve the quality of life of senior citizens
Ageing and Technology
The booming increase of the senior population has become a social phenomenon and a challenge to our societies, and technological advances have undoubtedly contributed to improve the lives of elderly citizens in numerous aspects. In current debates on technology, however, the »human factor« is often largely ignored. The ageing individual is rather seen as a malfunctioning machine whose deficiencies must be diagnosed or as a set of limitations to be overcome by means of technological devices. This volume aims at focusing on the perspective of human beings deriving from the development and use of technology: this change of perspective – taking the human being and not technology first – may help us to become more sensitive to the ambivalences involved in the interaction between humans and technology, as well as to adapt technologies to the people that created the need for its existence, thus contributing to improve the quality of life of senior citizens
SHELDON Smart habitat for the elderly.
An insightful document concerning active and assisted living under different perspectives: Furniture and habitat, ICT solutions and Healthcare
A Sensing Platform to Monitor Sleep Efficiency
Sleep plays a fundamental role in the human life. Sleep research is mainly focused on the understanding of the sleep patterns, stages and duration. An accurate sleep monitoring can detect early signs of sleep deprivation and insomnia consequentially implementing mechanisms for preventing and overcoming these problems. Recently, sleep monitoring has been achieved using wearable technologies, able to analyse also the body movements, but old people can encounter some difficulties in using and maintaining these devices. In this paper, we propose an unobtrusive sensing platform able to analyze body movements, infer sleep duration and awakenings occurred along the night, and evaluating the sleep efficiency index. To prove the feasibility of the suggested method we did a pilot trial in which several healthy users have been involved. The sensors were installed within the bed and, on each day, each user was administered with the Groningen Sleep Quality Scale questionnaire to evaluate the user’s perceived sleep quality. Finally, we show potential correlation between a perceived evaluation with an objective index as the sleep efficiency.</p
Sustainable Technology and Elderly Life
The coming years will see an exponential increase in the proportion of elderly people in our society. This accelerated growth brings with it major challenges in relation to the sustainability of the system. There are different aspects where these changes will have a special incidence: health systems and their monitoring; the development of a framework in which the elderly can develop their daily lives satisfactorily; and in the design of intelligent cities adapted to the future sociodemographic profile. The discussion of the challenges faced, together with the current technological evolution, can show possible ways of meeting the challenges. There are different aspects where these changes will have a special incidence: health systems and their monitoring; the development of a framework in which the elderly can develop their daily lives satisfactorily; and in the design of intelligent cities adapted to the future sociodemographic profile. This special issue discusses various ways in which sustainable technologies can be applied to improve the lives of the elderly. Six articles on the subject are featured in this volume. From a systematic review of the literature to the development of gamification and health improvement projects. The articles present suggestive proposals for the improvement of the lives of the elderly. The volume is a resource of interest for the scientific community, since it shows different research gaps in the current state of the art. But it is also a document that can help social policy makers and people working in this domain to planning successful projects
European consensus of criteria for the evaluation of good practices in chronic conditions
Los sistemas sanitarios reconocen las enfermedades crónicas como uno de sus grandes desafÃos de salud del siglo XXI para los sistemas sanitarios. A pesar de ser en gran medida prevenibles, las enfermedades crónicas son importante causa de mortalidad y morbilidad en Europa. En 2015, más de 1,2 millones de personas en los paÃses de la UE murieron por enfermedades y lesiones que podrÃan haberse evitado a través de polÃticas de salud pública más fuertes o de una atención médica más efectiva y menos fragmentada. La presente tesis doctoral reporta el desarrollo y resultados de una proceso de consenso internacional cuyo objetivo ha sido desarrollar criterios de evaluación para valorar el potencial de las prácticas clÃnicas e intervenciones y polÃticas sanitarias a la hora de disminuir la carga atribuible a las enfermedades crónicas en cuatro áreas de interés: Promoción de la salud y prevención primaria de condiciones crónicas; Intervenciones organizativas enfocadas al tratamiento de pacientes crónicos con condiciones clÃnicas múltiples; Intervenciones sobre el empoderamiento del paciente; e, Intervenciones y polÃticas orientadas a mejorar la diabetes (la diabetes se utiliza como condición paradigmática). Con objeto de acordar los criterios de evaluación y otorgarles relevancia distinta en función del dominio de interés, se desarrolló un consenso internacional mediante la técnica Delphi-modificada, en la que participaron 113 expertos de diferentes disciplinas procedentes de 23 paÃses europeos. El proceso de consenso produjo 145 categorÃa de evaluación (28 categorÃas en el Delphi de Health promotion and primary prevention of chronic conditions, 50 en el de Organizational interventions aimed at dealing with complex chronic patients with multiple conditions, 28 en el de Patient empowerment interventions with chronic conditions y 39 categorÃas en el Delphi de diabetes as a case-study) orientadas a valorar cada uno de los citados dominios y ponderarlos en función de cada área de interés. El conjunto de criterios y categorÃas acordados para el caso paradigmático de Diabetes apoya la hipótesis de que los criterios de valoración son transferibles y aplicables a la evaluación de prácticas, intervenciones y polÃticas desarrolladas sobre otras condiciones crónicas. Consistentemente con lo observado en otras iniciativas europeas, en este consenso, los criterios relacionados con ‘diseño de la práctica’, ‘evaluación’, ‘sostenibilidad’ y ‘escalabilidad’ parecen ser componentes esenciales en el desarrollo e implementación de buenas prácticas en Europa. Por último, como virtualidad destacable de este proceso de consenso, el componente internacional de las decisiones consensuadas, apoya la posibilidad de que las prácticas evaluadas con los criterios y categorÃas acordados puedan ser transferidas a cualquier contexto europeo.<br /
Creating Age-friendly Communities
The "Creating Age-friendly Communities: Housing and Technology" publication presents contemporary, innovative, and insightful narratives, debates, and frameworks based on an international collection of papers from scholars spanning the fields of gerontology, social sciences, architecture, computer science, and gerontechnology. This extensive collection of papers aims to move the narrative and debates forward in this interdisciplinary field of age-friendly cities and communities
Feature Papers "Age-Friendly Cities & Communities: State of the Art and Future Perspectives"
The "Age-Friendly Cities & Communities: States of the Art and Future Perspectives" publication presents contemporary, innovative, and insightful narratives, debates, and frameworks based on an international collection of papers from scholars spanning the fields of gerontology, social sciences, architecture, computer science, and gerontechnology. This extensive collection of papers aims to move the narrative and debates forward in this interdisciplinary field of age-friendly cities and communities
Social, Technological and Health Innovation: Opportunities and Limitations for Social Policy, Health Policy, and Environmental Policy
This Research Topic focuses on both strengths and weaknesses of social innovation, technological innovation, and health innovation that are increasingly recognized as crucial concepts related to the formulation of responses to the social, health, and environmental challenges. Goals of this Research Topic: (1) to identify and share the best recent practices and innovations related to social, environmental and health policies; (2) to debate on relevant governance modes, management tools as well as evaluation and impact assessment techniques; (3) to discuss dilemmas in the fields of management, financing, designing, implementing, testing, and maintaining the sustainability of innovative models of delivering social, health and care services; and (4) to recognize and analyze social, technological and health innovation that has emerged or has been scaled-up to respond to crisis situations, for example, a pandemic of the COVID-19 coronavirus disease
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