eHealth in support for daily functioning of people with intellectual disability:Views of service users, relatives, and professionals on both its advantages and disadvantages and its facilitating and impeding factors

Background: The use of eHealth in support for daily functioning of service users with intellectual disability (ID) is a rather unexplored domain. Therefore, the current study identified the a) level of familiarity, b) advantages/disadvantages, and c) facilitating/impeding factors for the use of eHealth in support for daily functioning of people with ID according to service users, relatives, and professionals. Method: Four focus groups and one semi-structured qualitative interview were conducted. Results: Participants were familiar with numerous eHealth applications. Benefits were related to service users (e.g., increased independency) and relatives/professionals (e.g., providing more efficient support). Adequate informing and involving all stakeholders and centrally positioning the needs and possibilities of service users were reported as important facilitators. Contrary, impeding factors were malfunctioning Internet, expenses of eHealth, and lack of proper IT-support. Conclusions: The results provide imperative information for future eHealth implementations and to direct its use more specifically to people with ID

eHealth in the support of people with mild intellectual disability in daily life:A systematic review

Background:  eHealth has recently made rapid progress in care, support and treatment. However, studies on the use of eHealth to support people with a mild intellectual disability in daily life are limited. A systematic review was conducted to provide an overview of this use of eHealth.  Methods:  Seven databases were searched for relevant studies and assessed according to the PRISMA guidelines. Descriptive analyses were deployed using the Matching Person to Technology model to evaluate the key areas contributing to successful eHealth use.  Results:  Most of the 46 studies included were small-scale case studies and focused on using eHealth to acquire daily living skills and vocational skills. In addition, several studies focused on eHealth use for self-support in daily living, and three studies focused on remote professional support.  Conclusions:  eHealth offers opportunities to support people with mild intellectual disability in various different contexts of daily life. Scientific research on this topic is in its early stage, and further high-quality research is needed

Characteristics of innovators adopting a national personal health record in Portugal : cross-sectional study

©Liliana Laranjo, Inês Rodolfo, Ana Marta Pereira, Armando Brito de Sá. Originally published in JMIR Medical Informatics (http://medinform.jmir.org), 11.10.2017. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Medical Informatics, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://medinform.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.Background: Personal health records (PHRs) are increasingly being deployed worldwide, but their rates of adoption by patients vary widely across countries and health systems. Five main categories of adopters are usually considered when evaluating the diffusion of innovations: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. Objective: We aimed to evaluate adoption of the Portuguese PHR 3 months after its release, as well as characterize the individuals who registered and used the system during that period (the innovators). Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study. Users and nonusers were defined based on their input, or not, of health-related information into the PHR. Users of the PHR were compared with nonusers regarding demographic and clinical variables. Users were further characterized according to their intensity of information input: single input (one single piece of health-related information recorded) and multiple inputs. Multivariate logistic regression was used to model the probability of being in the multiple inputs group. ArcGis (ESRI, Redlands, CA, USA) was used to create maps of the proportion of PHR registrations by region and district. Results: The number of registered individuals was 109,619 (66,408/109,619, 60.58% women; mean age: 44.7 years, standard deviation [SD] 18.1 years). The highest proportion of registrations was observed for those aged between 30 and 39 years (25,810/109,619, 23.55%). Furthermore, 16.88% (18,504/109,619) of registered individuals were considered users and 83.12% (91,115/109,619) nonusers. Among PHR users, 32.18% (5955/18,504) engaged in single input and 67.82% (12,549/18,504) in multiple inputs. Younger individuals and male users had higher odds of engaging in multiple inputs (odds ratio for male individuals 1.32, CI 1.19-1.48). Geographic analysis revealed higher proportions of PHR adoption in urban centers when compared with rural noncoastal districts. Conclusions: Approximately 1% of the country’s population registered during the first 3 months of the Portuguese PHR. Registered individuals were more frequently female aged between 30 and 39 years. There is evidence of a geographic gap in the adoption of the Portuguese PHR, with higher proportions of adopters in urban centers than in rural noncoastal districts.This work was supported by a Junior Clinical Research award from the Harvard Medical School—Portugal program (HMSP-ICJ/0005/2010; Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia) attributed to the first author.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

STS in management education: connecting theory and practice

This paper explores the value of science and technology studies (STS) to management education. The work draws on an ethnographic study of second year management undergraduates studying decision making. The nature and delivery of the decision making module is outlined and the value of STS is demonstrated in terms of both teaching method and module content. Three particular STS contributions are identified and described: the social construction of technological systems; actor network theory; and ontological politics. Affordances and sensibilities are identified for each contribution and a discussion is developed that illustrates how these versions of STS are put to use in management education. It is concluded that STS has a pivotal role to play in critical management (education) and in the process offers opportunities for new forms of managin

Learning to live in a smart home

Smart homes promise to significantly enhance domestic comfort, convenience, security and leisure whilst simultaneously reducing energy use through optimized home energy management. Their ability to achieve these multiple aims rests fundamentally on how they are used by householders, yet very little is currently known about this topic. The few studies that have explored the use of smart homes have tended to focus on special-interest groups and be quite short-term. This paper reports on new in-depth qualitative data that explore the domestication of a range of smart home technologies in 10 households participating in a nine-month field trial. Four core themes emerge: (1) smart home technologies are both technically and socially disruptive; (2) smart homes require forms of adaptation and familiarization from householders that can limit their use; (3) learning to use smart home technologies is a demanding and time-consuming task for which there is currently very little support available; and (4) there is little evidence that smart home technologies will generate substantial energy savings and, indeed, there is a risk that they may generate forms of energy intensification. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for policy, design and further research

Age- and puberty-dependent association between IQ score in early childhood and depressive symptoms in adolescence

BACKGROUND: Lower cognitive functioning in early childhood has been proposed as a risk factor for depression in later life but its association with depressive symptoms during adolescence has rarely been investigated. Our study examines the relationship between total intelligence quotient (IQ) score at age 8 years, and depressive symptoms at 11, 13, 14 and 17 years. METHOD: Study participants were 5250 children and adolescents from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and their Children (ALSPAC), UK, for whom longitudinal data on depressive symptoms were available. IQ was assessed with the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children III, and self-reported depressive symptoms were measured with the Short Mood and Feelings Questionnaire (SMFQ). RESULTS: Multi-level analysis on continuous SMFQ scores showed that IQ at age 8 years was inversely associated with depressive symptoms at age 11 years, but the association changed direction by age 13 and 14 years (age-IQ interaction, p<0.0001; age squared-IQ interaction, p<0.0001) when a higher IQ score was associated with a higher risk of depressive symptoms. This change in IQ effect was also found in relation to pubertal stage (pubertal stage-IQ interaction, 0.00049<p=0.038). At age 17 years, however, sex-specific differences emerged (sex-age squared-IQ interaction, p=0.0075). Whilst the risk effect of higher childhood IQ scores for depressive symptoms declined in females, and some analyses even supported an inverse association by age 17 years, it persisted in males. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that the association between cognitive ability in childhood and depressive symptoms in adolescence varies according to age and/or pubertal stage

Assessing Expectations: Towards a Toolbox for an Ethics of Emerging Technologies

In recent years, several authors have argued that the desirability of novel technologies should be assessed early, when they are still emerging. Such an ethical assessment of emerging technologies is by definition focused on an elusive object. Usually promises, expectations, and visions of the technology are taken as a starting point. As Nordmann and Rip have pointed out in a recent article, however, ethicists should not take for granted the plausibility of such expectations and visions. In this paper, we explore how the quality of expectations on emerging technologies might be assessed when engaging in a reflection on the desirability of emerging technologies. We propose that an assessment of expectations’ plausibility should focus on statements on technological feasibility, societal usability, and desirability of the expected technology. Whereas the feasibility statement and, to a lesser extent, the usability statements are frequently quite futuristic, the claims on desirability, by contrast, often display a conservative stance towards the future. Assessing the quality of expectations and visions on behalf of emerging technologies requires, then, a careful and well-directed use of both skepticism and imagination. We conclude with a brief overview of the tools and methods ethicists could use to assess claims made on behalf of emerging technologies and improve the ethical reflection on them

Motivations for innovation in the built environment: new directions for research

Innovation in the built environment involves multiple actors with diverse motivations. Policy-makers find it difficult to promote changes that require cooperation from these numerous and dispersed actors and to align their sometimes divergent interests. Established research traditions on the economics and management of innovation pay only limited attention to stakeholder choices, engagement and motivation. This paper reviews the insights that emerge as research in these traditions comes into contact with work on innovation from sociological and political perspectives. It contributes by highlighting growing areas of research on user involvement in complex innovation, collective action, distributed innovation and transition management. To differing extents, these provide approaches to incorporate the motivations of different actors into theoretical understanding. These indicate new directions for research that promise to enrich understanding of innovation