Critical Success Factors for Electronic Therapy—A Delphi Study

E-therapy employs a cross-section of online psychotherapies that use many of the same traditional face-to-face techniques as psychotherapy by exploiting electronic synchronous communication between a patient and trained therapists (counselors, psychoanalyst’s, or other licensed practitioners). A Delphi study of practicing therapists revealed five critical success factors (CSFs) (technological, managerial, empathic, service quality, and legal) that are important influences in the implementation of e-therapy services. Results suggest that managerial and legal factors hinder wider acceptance of e-therapy services. Secure and effective communication channels and protection of patient data emerge as important themes in the context of the five CSFs as concerns of potential e-therapists in wanting to provide effective care to patients

Legal Implications of a Ubiquitous Metaverse and a Web3 Future

The metaverse is understood to be an immersive virtual world serving as the locus for all forms of work, education, and entertainment experiences. Depicted in books, movies, and games, the metaverse has the potential not just to supplement real-world experiences but to substantially supplant them. This Article explores the rapid emergence and evolution of the Web3 technologies at the heart of the metaverse movement. Web3 itself is a paradigmatic shift in internet commerce

Data ethics : building trust : how digital technologies can serve humanity

Data is the magic word of the 21st century. As oil in the 20th century and electricity in the 19th century: For citizens, data means support in daily life in almost all activities, from watch to laptop, from kitchen to car, from mobile phone to politics. For business and politics, data means power, dominance, winning the race. Data can be used for good and bad, for services and hacking, for medicine and arms race. How can we build trust in this complex and ambiguous data world? How can digital technologies serve humanity? The 45 articles in this book represent a broad range of ethical reflections and recommendations in eight sections: a) Values, Trust and Law, b) AI, Robots and Humans, c) Health and Neuroscience, d) Religions for Digital Justice, e) Farming, Business, Finance, f) Security, War, Peace, g) Data Governance, Geopolitics, h) Media, Education, Communication. The authors and institutions come from all continents. The book serves as reading material for teachers, students, policy makers, politicians, business, hospitals, NGOs and religious organisations alike. It is an invitation for dialogue, debate and building trust! The book is a continuation of the volume “Cyber Ethics 4.0” published in 2018 by the same editors

Design and rationale of the MyHeartMate study: a randomised controlled trial of a game-based app to promote behaviour change in patients with cardiovascular disease

Introduction: Recurrence of cardiac events is common after a first event, leading to hospitalisations and increased health burden. Patients have difficulties achieving the lifestyle changes required for secondary prevention and access to secondary prevention programs is limited. This study aims to evaluate the impact of a game-based mobile app, MyHeartMate, which is designed to motivate engagement in secondary prevention behaviours for cardiovascular risk factors.Methods and analysis: The MyHeartMate study is a randomised controlled trial with 6-month follow-up and blinded assessment of the primary outcome. Participants (n=394) with coronary heart disease will be recruited from hospitals in metropolitan Sydney and randomly allocated to standard care or the MyHeartMate app intervention. The intervention group will receive the app, which uses game techniques to promote engagement and lifestyle behaviour change for secondary prevention. The primary outcome is difference between the groups in physical activity (metabolic equivalent of task minutes/week) at 6 months. Secondary outcomes include change in low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, systolic blood pressure, medication adherence, body mass index, waist circumference, mood and dietary changes at 6 months. Data on app engagement, and patient perspectives of usability and acceptability, will also be analysed.Ethics and dissemination: The study has received ethics approval from Northern Sydney Local Health District Human Research Ethics Committee. The study findings will be disseminated via peer-reviewed publications and presentation at international scientific meetings/conferences.Trial registration number: ACTRN12617000869370; Pre-results

Virtual Access: A New Framework for Disability and Human Flourishing in an Online World

While many commentators have noted the wealth and class disparities that emerge from the digital divide, disability adds another important lens through which to consider questions of access and equity. Online accessibility for disabled people has fallen prey to the same assumptions and impediments that led to the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) addressing disability access in the offline world. Addressing these shortcomings requires a significant conceptual shift in our understanding of “access,” even among disabled people. Offline, the sidewalk or doorway hindered access to those who needed assistance walking or moving. Today’s virtual sidewalks and doorways complicate access in fundamentally different but no less important ways.This Article reframes the legal, normative, and theoretical dimensions of the intersection of disability and online access to suggest a more granular approach than those provided by existing judicial and scholarly interventions. Our approach includes three recommendations. First, we suggest greater attention to online analogues for offline legal categories that create different zones for human interaction: public forums, public accommodations, non-public spaces, and what one of us has termed “private public forums”—the privately owned venues that functionally replace the public forum, especially online. Second, contrary to the approach adopted in some jurisdictions, we propose eliminating any requirement of a physical nexus between an online site and an in-person operation. Third, we recommend directing most regulatory requirements toward three kinds of commercial entities whose power, influence, and design functionality best position them to remedy existing gaps in online disability access, which we call design services, communication platforms and online mediators. Design services provide browsers, operating systems, and website design tools and templates. Communication platforms connect individual users through social media and other sharing mechanisms. Online mediators aggregate information to connect customers with product and service providers. If these three kinds of companies can set design norms for individual websites and apps, much of the framework for disability access will be in place. But as we will explain, not all individual users can or should be forced to incur compliance costs related to website and application design—some small sites are properly exempted from such oversight. For this reason, we suggest that design services make disability access the baseline; that communication platforms and online mediators implement accessibility once they reach certain size or revenue thresholds; and that certain users be permitted to opt out of disability access features

P5 eHealth: An Agenda for the Health Technologies of the Future

This open access volume focuses on the development of a P5 eHealth, or better, a methodological resource for developing the health technologies of the future, based on patients’ personal characteristics and needs as the fundamental guidelines for design. It provides practical guidelines and evidence based examples on how to design, implement, use and elevate new technologies for healthcare to support the management of incurable, chronic conditions. The volume further discusses the criticalities of eHealth, why it is difficult to employ eHealth from an organizational point of view or why patients do not always accept the technology, and how eHealth interventions can be improved in the future. By dealing with the state-of-the-art in eHealth technologies, this volume is of great interest to researchers in the field of physical and mental healthcare, psychologists, stakeholders and policymakers as well as technology developers working in the healthcare sector

Well-being Technologies: Meditation Using Virtual Worlds

In a technologically overloaded world, is it possible to use technology to support well-being activities and enhance human flourishing? Proponents of positive technology and positive computing are striving to answer yes to that question. However, the impact of technology on well-being remains unresolved. Positive technology combines technology and positive psychology. Positive psychology focuses on well-being and the science of human flourishing. Positive computing includes an emphasis on designing with well-being in mind as a way to support human potential. User experience (UX) is critical to positive technology and positive computing. UX researchers and practitioners are advocating for experience-driven design and third wave human-computer interaction (HCI) that focuses on multi-dimensional, interpretive, situated, and phenomenological aspects. Third-wave HCI goes beyond cognition to include emotions, values, culture, and experience. This research investigated technology-supported meditation in a three-dimensional (3D) virtual world from a positive technology perspective to examine how technology can support engagement, self-empowerment, and well-being. Designing and evaluating technology for well-being support is complex and challenging. Further, although virtual worlds have been used in positive technology applications, little research exists that illuminates the experience of user engagement in virtual worlds. In this formative exploratory study, experienced meditators (N = 12) interacted with a virtual meditation world titled Sanctuarium that was developed for this research. Using a third wave HCI approach, both quantitative and qualitative data were collected to understand the nature of engagement with a virtual world and the experiential aspects of technology-supported meditation. Results supported using virtual worlds to produce restorative natural environments. Participants overwhelmingly reacted positively to the islandscape including both visual and sound elements. Findings indicated that Sanctuarium facilitated the meditation experience, similar to guided meditation – although participants remarked on the uniqueness of the experience. Aspects of facilitation centered on the concepts of non-distraction, focus, and simplicity of design and instructions. Participants also identified Sanctuarium as a good tool for helping those new to meditation. Meditators described positive effects of their meditation experience during interviews and also rated their experience as positive using the scale titled Effects of Meditation During Meditation. Phenomenological analysis provided a rich description of the nature of engagement while meditating with Sanctuarium. Meditators also rated engagement as high via an adapted User Engagement Scale. This interdisciplinary work drew from multiple fields and contributes to the HCI domain, virtual worlds’ literature, information systems research, and the nascent areas of positive technology and positive computing

To (B)oldly Go: a study of older people's usage of ICT and its implications for thinking about (digital) identity

The demographic time bomb means that older people will become a major part of tomorrow's society. This has become an increasingly pressing issue for older people and government policy alike. ONS (2009) statistics suggest that past retirement age, the sense of quality of life (QoL) experienced by older people begins to decrease, with the fastest decline occurring after the age of 70. This research therefore began by investigating how ICT could be implicated in the social life of the older person and thus improve their QoL. Literature reviews of the field of older people's involvement with ICT indicated that there was very little research between the more general studies of ICT involvement (which include far more than the purely social aspects) and the very specific (which involve examining the social impact of just one piece of technology). This study therefore aimed to fill the gap between the two extremes. It also aimed to generate theory in an under-theorised area. The study began with a focus group and interviews asking questions around how people thought social life had changed with the advent of new technologies, how they experienced the technology, and how things could be improved in the future. The study was qualitative in nature and adopted a grounded theory approach in order to inductively generate theory. The study of the lived experience of ICT also contributed to a phenomenological approach. Comparative analysis of transcripts obtained in Phase One (Year One) enabled a set of Grounded Theory Categories to be created which accounted for what was happening in the data. A core category of identity was identified which influenced subsequent data collection in Phase Two (Year Two). Phase Two participants were then involved in more focused interviews around identity concepts. Further analysis in Year Two enabled a Schema of Subject Positions to be created concerning (digital) identities which accounted for all of the participants in the study and the ways in which they viewed and interacted with technology. The Categories were also subsumed within a Grounded Theory Model involving a tripartite identity schema aligned with Giddens theory of the reflexive project of the self. Findings suggest that participants are implicated in methods of identity involvement which can be playful or pragmatic; can be viewed in moral, immoral and amoral ways (leading to ideas of the authentic and the inauthentic); and can represent the individual or explore new identities. Identity construction can ultimately be implicated positively with the use of ICT, and may lead to a virtuous cycle of ICT usage which can improve quality of life by affirming better self-views or enabling the testing of new views of selfhood. Positive technology identities can be offered as identity role models for other older people to follow

Internet Human Rights

The rate at which Internet connectivity is spreading is matched only by the increasing amount of time people spend online. Today over 5 billion humans access the Internet; the overwhelming majority of them engage in social media, and almost all of them live out key aspects of their daily lives digitally. Human rights are universal in the sense that they apply to everyone, everywhere. And while there are indicators that they apply in cyberspace, how they apply is a different story. Now, as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) turns 75, we wonder how many of those rights accompany us into our digital lives. This article develops a matrix mapping how human rights, which were developed for the physical world, might apply in the digital world. Using the 30 articles (rights) enumerated in the UDHR as a foil, the broad outline of a clearer picture emerges. Some governments or courts mandate certain rights to fully manifest in digital space, others are making progress, and still others remain static. Moreover, these rights can be enforced via either state regulation or corporate terms of service. Designed as the first tool of its kind for attorneys, judges, policymakers, and advocates to chart which rights are accompanying us onto and into the Internet, this guide will be a foundational starting point for a much broader discussion to come