The Ethical Implications of Personal Health Monitoring

Personal Health Monitoring (PHM) uses electronic devices which monitor and record health-related data outside a hospital, usually within the home. This paper examines the ethical issues raised by PHM. Eight themes describing the ethical implications of PHM are identified through a review of 68 academic articles concerning PHM. The identified themes include privacy, autonomy, obtrusiveness and visibility, stigma and identity, medicalisation, social isolation, delivery of care, and safety and technological need. The issues around each of these are discussed. The system / lifeworld perspective of Habermas is applied to develop an understanding of the role of PHMs as mediators of communication between the institutional and the domestic environment. Furthermore, links are established between the ethical issues to demonstrate that the ethics of PHM involves a complex network of ethical interactions. The paper extends the discussion of the critical effect PHMs have on the patient’s identity and concludes that a holistic understanding of the ethical issues surrounding PHMs will help both researchers and practitioners in developing effective PHM implementations

The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health as a conceptual framework for the design, development and evaluation of AAL Services for older adults

Abstract. The paper presents the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) as a comprehensive model for a holistic approach for the design, development and evaluation of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) services for older adults. ICF can be used to systemize the information that influence individual's performance and to characterize users, theirs contexts, activities and participation. Furthermore, ICF can be used to structure a semantic characterization of AAL services and as a basis to develop methodological instruments for the services evaluation

Seven HCI Grand Challenges

This article aims to investigate the Grand Challenges which arise in the current and emerging landscape of rapid technological evolution towards more intelligent interactive technologies, coupled with increased and widened societal needs, as well as individual and collective expectations that HCI, as a discipline, is called upon to address. A perspective oriented to humane and social values is adopted, formulating the challenges in terms of the impact of emerging intelligent interactive technologies on human life both at the individual and societal levels. Seven Grand Challenges are identified and presented in this article: Human-Technology Symbiosis; Human-Environment Interactions; Ethics, Privacy and Security; Well-being, Health and Eudaimonia; Accessibility and Universal Access; Learning and Creativity; and Social Organization and Democracy. Although not exhaustive, they summarize the views and research priorities of an international interdisciplinary group of experts, reflecting different scientific perspectives, methodological approaches and application domains. Each identified Grand Challenge is analyzed in terms of: concept and problem definition; main research issues involved and state of the art; and associated emerging requirements

Active Ageing and Independent Living Services: The Role of Information and Communication Technology

Ageing populations influence services and traditional social support systems like social and health care in the European countries, as well as global patterns in labour and capital markets. It is widely accepted that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) applications can provide new ways of helping older citizens to live independently. ICT-based applications for independent living vary from general purpose and communication applications to applications specifically for e-learning, e-work and e-health. ICT-based services and understanding the needs of older people are key to supporting Active Ageing in upcoming ageing societies. However, there is still limited understanding of older people's technology-related needs. This report aims to support the research and policy development activities of DG Information Society and Media towards the European Research Area. It highlights the main policy areas related to ageing, where ICT-based applications could play a role, and suggests a number of research and policy challenges that need to be resolved in order to maximise the opportunities offered by ICT.JRC.J.4-Information Societ

SHELDON Smart habitat for the elderly.

An insightful document concerning active and assisted living under different perspectives: Furniture and habitat, ICT solutions and Healthcare

Independent Aging with the Help of Smart Technology:Investigating the Acceptance of Ambient Assisted Living Technologies

Who takes care of our older adults? According to the European Union, smart technologies that support independent living and active aging, introduced as ‘Ambient Assisted Living’ (AAL), are the future for our aging population. Promises of AAL include saving long-term care costs, improving the quality of care, unburdening family caregivers, and increasing the older adults’ independence and overall quality of life. While the policy enthusiasm for AAL technology is high, it is unclear if the potential users of AAL are willing to embrace AAL technologies in their daily lives. This dissertation addressed this issue by focusing on the perspective of older adults and their caregivers. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches, we developed a comprehensive and theoretically grounded understanding of how and why users perceive AAL technologies in a certain way. Important factors that drive or hinder the acceptance were identified. These insights resulted in a model of AAL acceptance that was validated in a representative sample (n = 1296) of the Dutch older adult population. This dissertation contributes to a more user-driven approach in AAL research and development and has important implications for researchers, developers and policy makers alike. We hope that our results will guide future research efforts, design and policy directions in the AAL field

Activities suggestion based on emotions in AAL environments

The elderly population is increasing and the response of the society was to provide them with services directed to them to cope with their needs. One of the oldest solutions is the retirement home, providing housing and permanent assistance for the elderly. Furthermore, most of the retirement homes are inhabited by multiple elderly people, thus creating a community of people who are somewhat related in age and medical issues. The ambient assisted living (AAL) area tries to solve some of the elderly issues by producing technological products, some of them dedicated to elderly homes. One of the identified problem is that elderly people are sometimes discontent about the activities that consume most of their day promoted by the retirement home social workers. The work presented in this paper attempts to improve how these activities are scheduled taking into account the elderlies' emotional response to these activities. The aim is to maximize the group happiness by promoting the activities the group likes, minding if they are bored due to activities repetition. In this sense, this paper presents an extension of the Cognitive Life Assistant platform incorporating a social emotional model. The proposed system has been modelled as a free time activity manager which is in charge of suggesting activities to the social workers. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Angelo Costa thanks the Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (FCT) the Post-Doc scholarship with the Ref. SFRH/BPD/102696/2014. This work is also supported by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2013 and partially supported by the MINECO/FEDER TIN2015-65515-C4-1-R and the FPI grant AP2013-01276 awarded to Jaime-Andres Rincon

Understanding the use of Virtual Reality in Marketing: a text mining-based review

The current study intends to highlight the most relevant studies in simulated realities with special attention to VR and marketing, showing how studies have evolved over time and discussing the findings. A text-mining approach using a Bayesian statistical topic model called latent Dirichlet allocation is employed to conduct a comprehensive analysis of 150 articles from 115 journals, all indexed in Web of Science. The findings reveal seven relevant topics, as well as the number of articles published over time, the authors most cited in VR papers and the leading journals in each topic. The article also provides theoretical and practical implications and suggestions for further research.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio