The Moderating Effect of Demographic Characteristics on Home Healthcare Robots Adoption: An Empirical Study

The home healthcare initiative aims to reduce healthcare cost, improve post-hospitalization healthcare quality and increase patient independency. Information technologies such as home healthcare robots are expected to play a major role in this effort. There have been some preliminary findings on the socio-technical determinants of robot adoption in home healthcare. However, there is a lack of understanding of other factors that moderate the effects of these determinants. To this end, this research aims to investigate demographic characteristics as possible moderators for robot adoption based on the UTAUT model. By analyzing the data collected from a survey, this study empirically demonstrates the moderating effects of gender, age and experiences on the adoption of home healthcare robots. In addition, the findings of this research lead to the development of a decision tree that can guide a cost- effective robot design. The paper concludes with the theoretical and practical implications of this research

Examining the Performance of Older and Younger Adults When Interacting with a Mobile Solution Supporting Levels of Dexterity

The purpose of this research is to develop and evaluate a mobile game to support the needs of adults aiming to strengthen their perceptual and dexterity skills. The game itself is an advanced version of a Whack-A-Mole style game, in which the user is required to select visual targets, as quickly and accurately as possible. In this version of the game, the user is able to modify the speed, target size, and availability of distracters. In this paper, the performance between older and younger users has been compared. Older adults had spent more time and missed more compared to the youth adults, highlighting the challenges with manual dexterity faced by older adults. Therefore, different ways were examined in which features of the game can be designed to better meet the needs of older adults. The paper has significant implications for elderly patients, physicians, technology designers and service providers

An Empirical Study of Home Healthcare Robots Adoption Using the UTUAT Model

Home healthcare initiatives are aimed to reduce readmission costs, transportation costs, and hospital medical errors, and to improve post hospitalization healthcare quality, and enhance patient home independency. Today, it is almost unimaginable to consider this initiative without information technology. Home healthcare robots are one type of the emerging technologies that hold promise for making clinical information available at the right place and right time. Several robots have been developed to facilitate home healthcare such as remote presence robots (e.g., RP2) and Paro. Most previous research focus on technical and implementation issues of home healthcare robots, there is a need to understand the factors that influence their adoption. This research aims to fill this knowledge gap by applying the UTAUT model. The model was tested using survey questionnaire. The empirical results confirm that performance expectancy, social influence, and facilitating condition directly affect usage intention of home healthcare robots, while effort expectancy indirectly affects usage intention through performance expectancy. Several practical and theoretical implications are also discussed

Smart Home Healthcare Settings: A Qualitative Study of the Domain Boundary

Addressing the health problems of the 21st century will require individuals to use a new set of medical and public health resources that extend beyond historic and traditional medical devices and are built on current and smart information technologies. Much of these new medical tools was originally designed by device manufacturers to be used only in clinical settings and by trained healthcare professionals but recently are finding their way into the home nevertheless. Their migration to the home poses many challenges to both caregivers and care recipients. In order to facilitate their migration to the home, it is very important to first understand the domain boundary, its components and their interactions. Little research discusses the context of smart home healthcare and its surrounding entities to date. This paper aims to fill the knowledge gap by developing a framework of smart home healthcare context. To this end, we conducted semi-structured interviews with patients and health professionals served for or by home healthcare agencies on the east coast in the United States. We analyzed the content applying thematic approach. The findings revealed four major components of the framework including person, tasks, technologies, and environments. The findings also revealed us to define the interactions between these components. The findings have significant implications for smart home designers and manufacturers, and service providers

Assessment of personal care and medical robots from older adults' perspective

Demographic reports indicate that population of older adults is growing significantly over the world and in particular in developed nations. Consequently, there are a noticeable number of demands for certain services such as health-care systems and assistive medical robots and devices. In today's world, different types of robots play substantial roles specifically in medical sector to facilitate human life, especially older adults. Assistive medical robots and devices are created in various designs to fulfill specific needs of older adults. Though medical robots are utilized widely by senior citizens, it is dramatic to find out into what extent assistive robots satisfy their needs and expectations. This paper reviews various assessments of assistive medical robots from older adults' perspectives with the purpose of identifying senior citizen's needs, expectations, and preferences. On the other hand, these kinds of assessments inform robot designers, developers, and programmers to come up with robots fulfilling elderly's needs while improving their life quality

Ethical framework of assistive devices: review and reflection

The population of ageing is growing significantly over the world, and there is an emerging demand for better healthcare services and more care centres. Innovations of Information and Communication Technology has resulted in development of various types of assistive robots to fulfil elderly’s needs and independency, whilst carrying out daily routine tasks. This makes it vital to have a clear understanding of elderly’s needs and expectations from assistive robots. This paper addresses current ethical issues to understand elderly’s prime needs. Also, we consider other general ethics with the purpose of applying these theories to form a proper ethics framework. In the ethics framework, the ethical concerns of senior citizens will be prioritized to satisfy elderly’s needs and also to diminish related expenses to healthcare services

Patients’ Behavioral Intention toward Using Healthcare Robots

Poor patient to doctor ratio in a large part of the world, rapid increase of the older adult population, and a growing shortage of nurses are acute problems that face the health care industry today. Despite of the broad undertaking in healthcare robot initiative, its success is dependent not only on health institutions and robot designers but also on patients’ willingness to adopt healthcare robots. To date, little research has attempted to explain the adoption of healthcare robots. This research is aimed to fill this gap by proposing a theoretical model. The model was tested using survey questionnaire. The empirical results confirm that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating condition and trust are determinants of patients’ behavioral intention to use healthcare robots. Several practical and theoretical implications are also discussed