ABSTRACT
Older adults (65+) are becoming primary users of emerging smart systems, especially homecare technologies. The current COVID-19 pandemic has created increased demand and pressure to speed up innovation with healthcare increasingly shifting from the clinic to the home. This acceleration in digital health has also given rise to increased potential risks related to privacy and security. This paper presents highlights of a literature review focused on privacy research involving older adults to inform research and development of home healthcare technologies as part of the National Research Council of Canada's Aging in Place Program. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.
ABSTRACT
We report on the literature review of best practices in virtual cardiac rehabilitation (VCR), with a focus on technology usability, acceptance, and adoption barriers. We reviewed recent papers published in scientific conferences and journals on the topics of virtual cardiac rehabilitation and remote cardiac monitoring, with a publication dates from 2019 to 2021. Cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of mortality in elderly populations worldwide, and older adults are at an increased risk of COVID-19. Before the pandemic, the uptake of VCR technologies was slow due to concerns about technology effectiveness and cost. Since early 2020, better acceptance and adoption of VCR into routine care have been observed in many countries, including Canada. Some VCR components, like patient education or consultations are digitized relatively easy with online education sessions and resource repositories available for patients. Other elements such as supervised exercise and safe physical activity are more difficult to implement and require use of home cardiac monitoring technology. A proper HCI design of VCR services can contribute to better technology adoption by both service provider s and patients, and lead to improved patient outcomes. Design recommendations to increase adoption and improve user engagement with VCR by older adults include using multimodal interfaces, providing structured training and support, tailoring content and mode of delivery to the user, enabling automatic data transfer and easy integration across various systems and devices, improving accuracy of home cardiac monitoring devices, and conducting systematic technology validation studies, including remote usability evaluations for VCR technologies as part of the technology adoption life cycle. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
This paper reports on the study of best practices in evaluation methodologies for aging in place technologies, and analyses their feasibility in a pandemic environment. The pandemic situation, with various physical distancing restrictions in place, especially for vulnerable older adults, has increased the importance of deploying health monitoring and social interaction technologies for aging in place. The pandemic also made it more difficult for researchers and developers of technologies to evaluate the usability of home health monitoring technologies. Existing technology evaluation methods mostly involve laboratory and home technology usability evaluations that could be problematic during physical distancing restrictions, and are not well suited for rapid evaluation of health monitoring technologies. The increasing trend in virtual doctor and health professional visits puts additional pressure to speed up innovation for home health and wellness monitoring and communication technologies without increasing risks for vulnerable populations. Researchers observed challenges with performing HCI research with older adults in a pandemic situation, including challenges with participant recruitment, obtaining informed consent for the study, shipping technology to the willing participants, assessing the ability of older adults to set up both digital health technology and remote usability tools, and research data collection. The need for low cost, low risk, easy to use and privacy-preserving usability evaluation methods and tools for home health monitoring is growing rapidly, and new remote usability evaluation methods and tools will add to the growing arsenal of digital technologies used in the public health response to COVID-19 and beyond. © 2021, Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada.
ABSTRACT
One of the challenges accompanying the global rise in aging populations is the increase in demand for care services. With an increase in age, the need for medical support also grows, which may lead to unplanned and frequent visits to the doctor. Recent developments in Smart technologies and the Internet of Things (IoT) will play an important role in designing suitable home healthcare support services for older adults and enable self-care for people as they age at home. The current COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the push for telehealth technology solutions including remote patient monitoring for senior adults who are medically or socially vulnerable. Remote health services are being promoted as a means of preserving the patient-healthcare provider relationship at times when an in-person visit is not practical or feasible, especially during COVID-19 and beyond. Smart technologies and IoT could potentially improve health outcomes and save lives. This paper will explore issues and challenges in introducing smart technologies and IoT into the homes of older adults, as well as explore features of the technology and potential outcomes that could allow older adults to remain autonomous, independent, safe, and encourage aging in place. The paper also identifies technology gaps and areas for future research. © 2021, Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada.
ABSTRACT
In this fast-paced technological era, the demand and the usage of applications which make our life easier have increased dramatically. This need has grown especially for the aging population who require help more than ever. Older adults (65+) need an effective way to communicate with a healthcare professional in case they require any advice about their health or schedule an in-person checkup. The current COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the push for remote check-ins and virtual care especially for older adults who are medically or socially vulnerable. Remote health services are being promoted as a means of preserving the patient-health care provider relationship at times when in-person visits are not practical or feasible, especially during COVID-19 and in the future. This paper describes an application to support vulnerable older adults in their home, with more responsive home health care services which can potentially reduce the number of unnecessary trips to the hospital for non-emergency situations. The process of designing the application will be described, including workflow, storyboards, and key steps in the validation process. The paper will also discuss future research directions. © 2021, Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada.
ABSTRACT
An independent judiciary is the guarantor of a democratic state governed by the rule of law, which we strive to build in Ukraine. This independence is ensured, among other things, by a stable and sufficient funding of the national courts, which has become a significant challenge. The resolution of such issues has been sought in recent decades, but the problem of court financing has become especially acute in the context of the economic crisis and the coronavirus pandemic, which occurred in 2020. This has led to somewhat hopeless feelings about the chosen way of forming the policy of Ukrainian courts financing and its implementation. Our study attempts to analyze certain aspects of the existing mechanism of financing the judiciary in Ukraine, in particular, through the prism of financial support for judges and assistant judges during the coronavirus pandemic. The functions which they perform can be attributed to the main ones during the administration of justice. The authors propose the analysis of the case on the protection of the right of assistant judges to a decent salary, which lasted for years in all courts of the state. In connection with the coronavirus pandemic in Ukraine, a law was passed reducing the salaries of judges, which is also analyzed in the article. The search for a new, more modern approach to resolving the issue of a stable financial independence of the judiciary will help to solve urgent problems and ensure a real rule of law in Ukraine. In particular, our proposed approach to the formation of financial autonomy of the judiciary in Ukraine is suggested in this study. © 2020 Access to Justice in Eastern Europe, Iryna Kondratova and Tetiana Korotenko.
ABSTRACT
Older adults (65+) are becoming primary users of technologies, including IoTs, wearables and emerging smart systems, especially for aging in place and in daily living activities related to better health and wellness. Research demonstrates some critical features in home health care and wearable technology adoption by older adults such as wearability, device appearance, display and interaction, the modeling and technical aspects of data measurement and presentation, with more sophisticated, personalized interaction systems and data analysis expected over time. The design and development of home health care technologies are often led by the requirements of their social and caregiving environments rather than the needs and preferences of older adult users. The mismatch between functionalities, intrinsic motivations and expected benefits has a detrimental impact on user acceptance. User acceptance is critical for technology to be integrated within daily living especially in areas such as IoTs and wearables. Cybersecurity is an essential part of a safe, effective and reliable healthcare delivery system. Security and privacy challenges can be overcome by implementing best practices to safeguard systems and devices. There are significant privacy risks associated with wearables and home IoTs. The literature review has identified emerging issues that underscore the need to develop a set of guidelines for conducting HCI and human factors research based on an understanding of older adults’ perceptions and preferences about data privacy and security. Additionally, directions for current and future research are discussed in the paper, including late breaking research on virtual care and support vulnerable seniors during the COVID 19 pandemic. © 2020, National Research Council of Canada.