Design and Evaluation of a Technological Platform for Monitoring Patients with Dementia: Unifying Requirements from Mexican Day Centers.

The monitoring of patients with dementia who receive comprehensive care in day centers allows formal caregivers to make better decisions and provide better care to patients. For instance, cognitive and physical therapies can be tailored based on the current stage of disease progression. In the context of day centers of the Mexican Federation of Alzheimer, this work aims to design and evaluate Alzaid, a technological platform for assisting formal caregivers in monitoring patients with dementia. Alzaid was devised using a participatory design methodology that consisted in eliciting and validating requirements from 22 and 9 participants, respectively, which were unified to guide the construction of a high-fidelity prototype evaluated by 14 participants. The participants were formal caregivers, medical staff, and management. This work contributes a high-fidelity prototype of a technological platform for assisting formal caregivers in monitoring patients with dementia considering restrictions and requirements of four Mexican day centers. In general, the participants perceived the prototype as quite likely to be useful, usable, and relevant in the job of monitoring patients with dementia (p-value < 0.05). By evaluating and designing Alzaid that unifies requirements for monitoring patients of four day centers, this work is the first effort towards a standard monitoring process of patients with dementia in the context of the Mexican Federation of Alzheimer.

Design and evaluation of a dashboard to support the comprehension of the progression of patients with dementia in day centers.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: In day centers, people with dementia are assigned to specific groups to receive care according to the progression of the disease. This article presents the design and evaluation of a dashboard aimed at facilitating the comprehension of the progression of people with dementia to support decision-making of healthcare professionals (HCPs) when determining patient-group assignment. MATERIALS AND METHOD: A participatory design methodology was followed to build the dashboard. The grounded theory methodology was utilized to identify requirements. A total of 8 HCPs participated in the design and evaluation of a low-fidelity prototype. The perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of the high-fidelity prototype was evaluated by 15 HCPs (from several day centers) and 38 psychology students utilizing a questionnaire based on the technology acceptance model. RESULTS: HCPs perceived the dashboard as extremely likely to be useful (Mdn=6.5 out of 7) and quite likely to be usable (Mdn=6 out of 7). Psychology students perceived the dashboard as quite likely to be useful and usable (both with Mdn=6). CONCLUSIONS: Making use of a participatory design helped foster in HCPs a sense of ownership of the dashboard, thus facilitating its acceptance. The creation of low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes led to identifying valuable, timely, and specific feedback at different stages of the development process as well as to establishing a set of lessons learned for the development of dashboards in the healthcare domain.