Computing Technologies for Reflective and Creative Care for People with Dementia

Digital technologies have much to offer the care for people with dementia. However, their uptake so far has been slow. In this article, we report the introduction of sensor and mobile technologies and applications to support carers of people with dementia in residential homes to be more reflective and creative. Results revealed that carers can and want to use these technologies, but more effective app alignment with different dementia care strategies will be needed to achieve widespread technology take‐up

Would You Help Me Voluntarily for the Next Two Years? Evaluating Psychological Persuasion Techniques in Human-Robot Interaction. First results of an empirical investigation of the door-in-the-face technique in human-robot interaction

Human-robot communication scenarios are becoming increasingly important. In this paper, we investigate the differences between human-human and human-robot communication in the context of persuasive communication. We ran an experiment using the door-in-the-face technique in a hu-manrobot context. In our experiment, participants communicated with a robot that performed the door-in-the-face technique, in which the communicating agent asks for an "extreme" favor first and a for a small favor shortly after to increase affirmative response to the second request. Our results show a surprisingly high acceptance rate for the extreme request and a smaller acceptance rate for the small request compared to the original study of Cialdini et al., so our results differ from the classical human-human door-in-the-face experiments. This suggests that human-robot persuasive communication differs from human-human communication, which is surprising given related work. We discuss potential reasons for our observations and outline the next research steps to answer the question whether the door-in-the-face and similar persuasive techniques would be effective if applied by robots. © 2023 Copyright for this paper by its authors

Key challenges for enabling agile BPM with social software

International audienceBusiness Process Management is called agile when it is able to react quickly and adequately to internal and external events. Agile Business Process Management requires putting the life cycle of business processes on a new paradigm. It is advocated in this paper that social software allows us to satisfy the key requirements for enabling agile BPM by applying the four features of social software: weak ties, social production, egalitarianism and mutual service provision. Organizational and semantic integration and responsiveness (of the business processes engineering, execution and management activities) have been identified as the main requirements for implementing an agile BPM life cycle. Social software may be used in the BPM life cycle in several manners and using numerous approaches. This paper presents seven among them and then analyzes the 'support' effects between those approaches and the underlying social software features, and the three requirements for Agile BPM

Determinants of medication adherence and blood pressure control among hypertensive patients in Hong Kong: a cross-sectional study

Introduction: Despite effective treatments, suboptimal medication adherence substantially hinders blood pressure (BP) control among hypertensive patients. This study aimed to evaluate the determinants of medication adherence and BP control among hypertensive patients in Hong Kong. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted. Adult patients aged > 18 years taking at least one type of antihypertensive drugs were recruited from four clinics in Hong Kong. Each patient completed a self-administered questionnaire, including socio-demographic variables and items related to knowledge, illness perception and medication adherence. Medication adherence was measured by the eight-item Morisky Medication Adherence Scale (MMAS-8), with a score > 6 defined as “good adherence”. BP was measured, and optimal control was defined as systolic BP < 140 mm Hg and diastolic BP < 90 mm Hg. Results: Among 2445 patients, 55.1% and 52.5% had optimal medication adherence and BP control, respectively. Binary logistic regression analyses were conducted with optimal medication adherence and BP control, respectively, as the outcome variables. Advanced age (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 1.012, 95% CI 1.002–1.022, p = 0.014), unemployment (aOR for employed 0.782, 95% CI 0.628–0.975, p = 0.029), and good self-perceived health status (aOR 2.155, 95% CI 1.711–2.714, p < 0.001) were associated with good adherence; whereas being married (aOR 1.265, 95% CI 1.038–1.542, p = 0.020) and having no co-morbidity (aOR for morbidity count 0.713, 95% CI 0.639–0.796, p < 0.001) were associated with optimal BP control. Conclusion: Evidence-based, adherence-enhancing interventions should be targeted on younger subjects; employed patients; and those with poor self-perceived health status. Patients who are single and those with comorbidities should be closely monitored for their BP control

Model-Based Conflict Resolution in Service Internationalization: A Participatory Approach

Internationalizing service processes within internationally operating service providers requires service managers to balance the potential of internationally standardized service processes and the local needs of individual subsidiaries.2 This process bears the risk of conflicts arising from differences in prerequisites for service execution, availability of qualifications among employees or compatibility of processes to be exchanged with existing ones. Despite being pivotal to successful service internationalization, surprisingly little guidance can be found on the actual procedure of identifying and resolving such conflicts on an international scale (Bachmann/Wolf 2007). In this paper, we focus on service processes in which conflicts may lead to frictions in execution, which will in turn cause the processes to be less efficient and beneficial for both client and customer. To overcome this, we developed an approach to systematically identify, visualize, discuss and resolve conflicts while maintaining corporate standards. This approach is embedded into a comprehensive method for international service planning and implementation (Böhmann et al. 2011)