The Ontology for the Telehealth Domain – TEON

Information about telehealth is distributed over many systems, generating content overlap and heterogeneity. As a way to standardize nomenclatures and organize content in telehealth systems and applications, the use of standardized vocabularies is recommended. However, most of them rely on informal text-free definitions that bring confusion. Together with this limitation, and due to recent Brazilian regulations concerning the delivery of telehealth services, a Telehealth Ontology (TEON) was developed. This study describes and presents TEON, elucidating its main use-case, its applicability and potential to improve information exchange, interoperability and decision support. TEON was developed based on the upper-domain ontology BioTopLite2 (BTL2) and Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI). The scope of the work includes a set of competency questions to guide the domain modelling. TEON was formalized with Description Logics (DL) and the Web Ontology Language v.2 (OWL2). The telehealth services are composed of three main components: actors, the service itself and temporal-location barriers. The main roles are identified as the requestor, the teleconsultant and the manager. With TEON, we are able to specify if services are synchronous or not. Services are described by means of participants in the process, i.e. by specifying the agents and patients according to their roles. The envisioned use of TEON is to enable the integration of heterogeneous databases from different telehealth systems, considering the formal perspective embedded in ontologies. Currently, TEON is being included in HealthNet (teleconsultation), INDU (tele-education), dataNUTES (management), and SMART (monitoring) through as an integration interface, in order to generate indicators and reports to support telehealth manager’s decision-making and to facilitate providing indicators to the system for monitoring and results evaluation of the National Brazilian Telehealth Program of the Ministry of Health

Central monitoring system for ambient assisted living

Smart homes for aged care enable the elderly to stay in their own homes longer. By means of various types of ambient and wearable sensors information is gathered on people living in smart homes for aged care. This information is then processed to determine the activities of daily living (ADL) and provide vital information to carers. Many examples of smart homes for aged care can be found in literature, however, little or no evidence can be found with respect to interoperability of various sensors and devices along with associated functions. One key element with respect to interoperability is the central monitoring system in a smart home. This thesis analyses and presents key functions and requirements of a central monitoring system. The outcomes of this thesis may benefit developers of smart homes for aged care

Occupational Therapy Students’ Responses to Online Standardized Patient Simulations

Campus closures during the COVID-19 pandemic led to the innovation of online standardized patient (SP) simulations. Extensive preparation with the faculty, simulation specialists, SPs, and 42 occupational therapy students was required to smoothly adapt an occupational therapy learning module from in-person to online simulations. The concepts of functional task alignment and psychological fidelity from the simulation literature guided the process of designing the online simulations. Post-simulation, student perceptions about learner engagement, psychological fidelity, and accomplishment of the simulation’s learning outcomes were collected using anonymous surveys. All 36 survey respondents found the online SP encounters to be engaging. Most experienced realism in their emotional responses as well as the interpersonal and cognitive skills used during the simulation. Overall, students felt that the online simulations provided an effective way to meet the intended learning outcomes. Additionally, five individual student interviews were completed to further explore the students’ overall experience as a simulation participant, challenges encountered, and how the online simulation experience could be improved. Emerging themes from the interview data were: (a) a stepping stone for learning, (b) realism of the experience, (c) physical fidelity, (d) limitations of being online, and (e) curriculum design and implementation. Findings suggest that online SP simulations are a promising innovation with multiple potential applications in occupational therapy education during a pandemic and beyond

The Process for the Formulation of the International Telehealth Position Statement for Occupational Therapy

The World Federation of Occupational Therapists (WFOT) consists of 84 member organizations representing over 420,000 occupational therapists internationally (WFOT, 2014).  In 2014, WFOT published the WFOT Telehealth Position Statement on the use of telehealth in occupational therapy. The process for the formulation of the official document involved reviewing WFOT member organizations’ telehealth position statements and data collected from a survey sent to member organizations’ delegates in April 2014.  Qualitative data from 39 countries yielded factors to consider in five key areas:  licensure/registration requirements, the cost of technology, privacy and security, reimbursement/payment models, and other issues (e.g., need for collaboration/transfer of knowledge, client selection, provider competencies, standard of care).  The WFOT Telehealth Position Statement addressed each of these areas.  The collaborative effort resulting in the development of the WFOT Telehealth Position Statement serves as a model for other international organizations

Exploring the impact of telehealth videoconferencing services on work systems for key stakeholders in New Zealand : a sociotechnical systems approach : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Management at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand

Figure 2.9 is re-used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. Figures 2.11 and 2.13 are re-used with the publishers' permission.This thesis explores how the impacts of telehealth videoconferencing services (THVCS) on work systems are perceived by key stakeholders in New Zealand. Telehealth - the use of information and communications technologies to deliver healthcare when patients and providers are not in the same physical location - exemplifies how technological developments are changing the ways in which healthcare is provided and experienced. With the objectives of improving access, quality, and efficiencies of financial and human resources, THVCS use real time videoconferencing to provide healthcare services to replace travel to a common location. Despite the benefits of telehealth reported in the extant literature, there continues to be difficulties with developing and sustaining services. The aim of this inquiry is to understand how THVCS impact key stakeholders in the work system. Specifically, it seeks to examine the characteristics of THVCS in the New Zealand context, identify the facilitators and barriers to THVCS, and understand how the work system can adapt for THVCS to be sustained practice. The research design is framed by a post-positivist approach and underpinned by sociotechnical systems (STS) theory. STS theory and a human factors/ergonomics design approach inform the methodology, including the use of the SEIPS 2.0 model. Forty semi-structured qualitative interviews and contextual observations in a two-phase methodology explore the perceptions of an expert telehealth group, and providers, receivers, and decliners of THVCS. These data are analysed using the framework method of thematic analysis. The key findings suggest that to enable sustained THVCS in New Zealand, factors such as new ways of working; change; human connection; what is best for patient; and equity need to be recognised and managed in a way that balances costs and consequence and ensures fit across the work system. Theoretical contributions to knowledge are made through the development of a conceptual model from the literature, exploring THVCS with an STS theory lens and developing SEIPS 2.0. Methodologically, this inquiry contributes a theory-based, qualitative approach to THVCS research and draws on the perceptions of unique groups of participants. Significantly, the findings make practical contributions to the design of the THVCS in the New Zealand context

Taking IT Artifacts Seriously: Developing a Mixed Determinants Model of Assimilation of Telehealth Systems

A number of healthcare authorities are considering the adoption of telehealth into mainstream clinical care, bringing telehealth technology out of experimental settings into real life settings. To fully reap the benefits from a technological innovation, the innovation must be assimilated into the organization\u27s work system. As most literature on telehealth adoption to date has focused on its evaluation (e.g., user acceptance), more work is warranted to understand how telehealth can be integrated into administrative and clinical practices and to identify factors that may impinge onto telehealth integration. Borrowing from institutional, structuration and organizational learning theories, we propose a research framework* to address limitations of past work and to guide research and managerial actions while integrating telehealth in the workplace

Systemic modeling in telemedicine

The complexity of the health care system is a particularly notable framework for the development of telehealth and telemedicine. It is therefore necessary to try to answer the relevant question that can be summarized broadly as ‘‘How to manage this complex system?’’ We will discuss here the relations between system engineering and telehealth, or more specifically how systems engineering can be applied in the design of a telehealth system, and what benefits it can bring in its development. This naturally leads us to think of methods you can use to understand the difficulty of decision-making and the conceptual perspectives. It has been an accepted fact that this first requires modeling, i.e. to construct a representation of the perceived reality through symbols and relevant rules, then to verify or validate in absolute terms this representation, model, so as to improve or be able to use it. The importance of this modeling and the rigorous analysis of the requirements of telemedicine systems are even more apparent since the recognition of the generic representation declined in two meta-models: the first covers the activities of teleconsultation, teleexpertise and teleassistance; the second concerns telemonitoring