Designing an Artifact to Empower Chronic Patients for Monitoring Health During a Pandemic: A COVID-19 Screening App

Chronic diseases have been declared an invisible epidemic by the World Health Organization (WHO, 2005). Over the past fifty years, the prevalence of chronic conditions has increased, leading to the disease burden caused by cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and mental and substance use disorders (DOH, 2021). Chronic patients need to reimagine how they will empower themselves to effectively manage and monitor their health and wellbeing in a COVID-19 era when frequent in-person health care visits will no longer be feasible. In this study, we propose the dimensions for the design of a mobile-based application that will aid chronic patients and end-users in self-managing and monitoring their health during the pandemic era. Based on an empirical investigation involving pharmacists and researchers, we designed and developed a prototype capable of empowering chronic patients. This study particularly focuses on how technological interventions can help chronic patients self-manage and monitor their health and well-being related to COVID-19 where the user expectations are met with less attrition rates

Research with and for Older People at Loughborough University

Our Dementia research is part of Loughborough University Health and Wellbeing (HWB) Global Challenge http://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/excellence/challenges/health-wellbeing/). This strategic approach supports multi-disciplinary research in bringing complex real world solutions to promote health and wellbeing across the life course. Other research priorities within HWB include Planetary Health and Anti-Microbial Resistance. Research with and for older people in Loughborough University is carried out by a number of multi-disciplinary research units/groups with different specialist interests for example: - Dementia research for design, diagnostics and interventions http://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/dementia/ - Centre for Research in Social Policy (http://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/crsp/) - Healthcare Ergonomics & Patient Safety (http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/design-school/research/environmentalergonomics/) - Life Long determinants of health and wellbeing (http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ssehs/research/lifestyle-healthwellbeing/life-course-determinants-health-wellbeing/) We describe our research in these five overlapping and closely-related topic areas: (1) New Dynamics of Ageing; (2) Dementia: Diagnosis, Design and Interventions; (3) Getting out and about (Transport ); (4) Working Later; (5) Health, Wellbeing and Safety for Older Peopl

Counting the cost: the impact of young men's mental health on the Australian economy

Mental illness in young men costs the Australian economy A$387,000 per hour and over nine million working days lost per annum – figures which this report argues cannot be ignored by the business sector. The human and economic costs of mental illness in Australia can no longer be ignored. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reports that 26.5% of adolescents (one in four young people in this age group) will experience a mental health problem. In spite of this, rates of helpseeking among young Australians, and particularly among young men, remain low. Tragically, suicide continues to be the leading cause of death for young men in Australia, accounting for 22% of all deaths; with male youth suicide rates in rural areas double those of metropolitan areas. This report analyses the resultant cost and impact on the Australian economy, highlighting the threat to productivity from poor mental health among young men. In presenting this new evidence, this report provides a call-to-action, demonstrating the importance of a community-wide response to raising awareness, prevention and treatment of young men’s mental illness

Proceedings of Designing Self-care for Everyday Life. Workshop in conjunction with NordiCHI 2014, 27th October.

Managing chronic conditions can be challenging. People in such conditions, and the people around them, have to, for example: deal with symptoms, adapt to the resulting disability, manage emotions, and change habits to keep the condition under control. Self-care technologies have the potential to support self-care, however they often disregard the complexity of the settings in which they are used and fail to become integrated in everyday life.The present collection of papers forms the Proceedings of the Workshop “Designing Selfcare for Everyday Life” conducted last October 27th, 2014 in Helsinki, where 14 participants from 7 different countries spent the day discussing how to design self-care technologies that are in harmony with people’s everyday life. During the morning, discussions were driven by poster presentations focused on the participants’ work. In the afternoon, we engaged in aparticipatory design exercise focused on the self-care of Parkinson’s disease. Our discussions were driven by the experience of two people living with Parkinson’s that participated in our workshop. At the end of the exercise, each group presented the different insights, concepts and problems that each patient experiences in their everyday life with the disease. Last, we all engaged in a broader discussion with a mapping exercise of issues and challenges in relation to self-care.The contributions featured in the proceedings have been peer-reviewed by the members of the Workshop Program Committee and selected on the basis of their quality, alignment with the workshop theme, and the extent (and diversity) of their backgrounds in design. They express points of view of researchers from both Academia and Industry and provide relevant insights in the design and development use of technologies for self-care.We want to thank all the participants and co-authors for contributing to the Workshop. We are particularly grateful to the two patients, members of the Finnish Parkinson’s Association, who accepted to participate in the workshop and enabled researchers to get aperspective on the challenges of their lives. We also want to thank all the Programme Committee members for all their work during the reviewing process as well as the organisers of NordiCHI 2014 for providing useful facilities

BioMeT and algorithm challenges: A proposed digital standardized evaluation framework

Technology is advancing at an extraordinary rate. Continuous flows of novel data are being generated with the potential to revolutionize how we better identify, treat, manage, and prevent disease across therapeutic areas. However, lack of security of confidence in digital health technologies is hampering adoption, particularly for biometric monitoring technologies (BioMeTs) where frontline healthcare professionals are struggling to determine which BioMeTs are fit-for-purpose and in which context. Here, we discuss the challenges to adoption and offer pragmatic guidance regarding BioMeTs, cumulating in a proposed framework to advance their development and deployment in healthcare, health research, and health promotion. Furthermore, the framework proposes a process to establish an audit trail of BioMeTs (hardware and algorithms), to instill trust amongst multidisciplinary users

Quantifying Quality of Life

Describes technological methods and tools for objective and quantitative assessment of QoL Appraises technology-enabled methods for incorporating QoL measurements in medicine Highlights the success factors for adoption and scaling of technology-enabled methods This open access book presents the rise of technology-enabled methods and tools for objective, quantitative assessment of Quality of Life (QoL), while following the WHOQOL model. It is an in-depth resource describing and examining state-of-the-art, minimally obtrusive, ubiquitous technologies. Highlighting the required factors for adoption and scaling of technology-enabled methods and tools for QoL assessment, it also describes how these technologies can be leveraged for behavior change, disease prevention, health management and long-term QoL enhancement in populations at large. Quantifying Quality of Life: Incorporating Daily Life into Medicine fills a gap in the field of QoL by providing assessment methods, techniques and tools. These assessments differ from the current methods that are now mostly infrequent, subjective, qualitative, memory-based, context-poor and sparse. Therefore, it is an ideal resource for physicians, physicians in training, software and hardware developers, computer scientists, data scientists, behavioural scientists, entrepreneurs, healthcare leaders and administrators who are seeking an up-to-date resource on this subject

Profiling mental health service use in the Square Mile. A report to the City of London Local Involvement Network.

This research study contacted a total of fifty-nine (n=59) respondents (including service providers, purchasers and/or commissioners) who were asked to give relevant information on service use by Square Mile residents or workforce. Contact for similar purposes was made with twenty (n=20) senior personnel from twenty (n=20) City-based financial sector businesses and with eleven (n=11) staff from eleven (n=11) churches also based within the Square Mile. Ninety (n=90) providers were found to be commissioned to provide mental health and related services for the residents and workforce within the Square Mile. However, many services were geographically located and delivered outside of the City i.e. extramurally,as were many related stakeholder engagement events. An example of this extrinsic approach was the ‘Have Your Say!’ flyer from the East London NHS Foundation Trust (ELNHSFT), urging Square Mile service users to engage in the Trust’s 2011 Annual Plan consultation events (see Appendix One). However, no events were held in the City for them. They could exercise their rights to engage with their service providers only by travelling to events held in Hackney or Tower Hamlets. This distancing in both service provision and engagement is a recurring phenomenon in this study, and one apparently unique to City residents – residents in other localities receive many more of their services and consultations where they actually live