41 research outputs found
On preventive blood pressure self-monitoring at home
Self-monitoring activities are increasingly becoming part of peopleâs everyday lives. Some of these measurements are taken voluntarily rather than being referred by a physician and conducted because of either a preventive health interest or to better understand the body and its functions (the so-called Quantified Self). In this article, we explore socio-technical complexities that may occur when introducing preventive health-measurement technologies into older adultsâ daily routines and everyday lives. In particular, the original study investigated blood pressure (BP) measurement in non-clinical settings, to understand existing challenges, and uncover opportunities for self-monitoring technologies to support preventive healthcare activities among older adults. From our study, several important aspects emerged to consider when designing preventive self-monitoring technology, such as the complexity of guidelines for self-measuring, the importance of interpretation, understanding and health awareness, sharing self-monitoring information for prevention, various motivational factors, the role of the doctor in prevention, and the home as a distributed information space. An awareness of these aspects can help designers to develop better tools to support peopleâs preventive self-monitoring needs, compared to existing solutions. Supporting the active and informed individual can help improve peopleâs self-care, awareness, and implementation of preventive care. Based on our study, we also reflect on the findings to illustrate how these aspects can both inform people engaged in Quantified Self activities and designers alike, and the tools and approaches that have sprung from the so-called Quantified Self movement
Robot deployment in long-term care: a case study of a mobile robot in physical therapy
Background. Healthcare systems in industrialised countries are challenged to provide
care for a growing number of older adults. Information technology holds the promise of
facilitating this process by providing support for care staff, and improving wellbeing of
older adults through a variety of support systems. Goal. Little is known about the
challenges that arise from the deployment of technology in care settings; yet, the
integration of technology into care is one of the core determinants of successful
support. In this paper, we discuss challenges and opportunities associated with
technology integration in care using the example of a mobile robot to support physical
therapy among older adults with cognitive impairment in the European project
STRANDS. Results and discussion. We report on technical challenges along with
perspectives of physical therapists, and provide an overview of lessons learned which
we hope will help inform the work of researchers and practitioners wishing to integrate
robotic aids in the caregiving process
Limbo: A Tuple Space Based Platform for Adaptive Mobile Applications
Mobile computing environments are characterised by significant and rapid changes in their supporting infrastructure and, in particular, in the quality-of-service (QoS) available from their underlying communications channels. Applications which can operate in these environments and take advantage of changing QoS require distributed systems support platforms. The current state-of-the-art in such platforms attempt to provide synchronous connection-oriented programming paradigms reflecting their fixed network origin. In this paper we argue that these paradigms are not well suited to operation in a mobile environment and instead propose a new platform called Limbo based on the tuple space communications paradigm. The design of Limbo is presented together with details of two prototype implementations. The use of the platform to re-engineer a number of existing adaptive mobile applications is also discussed