What Do Elderly Desire? A Case For Virtual Communities

2004

Healthcare aims to improve the quality and safety of patient care, by encouraging and promoting the use of Information Technology (IT) in healthcare. The journal acts as a medium for the international exchange of knowledge and experience of the benefits of IT in healthcare. It publishes papers that educate healthcare professionals on the use of IT in clinical practice, and particularly papers that provide objective evidence of the benefits of IT in healthcare.

2002

In this paper we describe mobile virtual healthcare communities as a solution for meeting cancer patients information and interaction needs. After an introduction into the healthcare system and its potential starting points for virtual communities, we focus on cancer patients. We analyse their situation through field studies and identify information and interaction needs. On this basis we derive requirements for user centric socio technical system design for cancer patients. As at present no existing offers meet these prerequisite, we intend to develop and implement a mobile healthcare community for cancer patients. The objective is to introduce a socially accepted, technically stable and economically reasonable system. By the time of the conference we assume to have implemented this community platform.

2006

Virtual communities can -theoretically -be described as a solution for meeting ubiquitous information and interaction needs. Such needs occur in healthcare, when for example freshly diagnosed cancer patients develop very strong information and interaction needs. But how can such a platform for cancer patients be designed, implemented and introduced practically? What specifications must a possible technical infrastructure meet? The COSMOS project addresses these topics. Besides these aspects, new technological possibilities like mobile services and mobile devices are influencing virtual communities. Subjects like ubiquitous community access, new possibilities of user identification, and location-related services are of special interest since they might allow real anytime-anyplace access to the community platform.

Healthcare aims to improve the quality and safety of patient care, by encouraging and promoting the use of Information Technology (IT) in healthcare. The journal acts as a medium for the international exchange of knowledge and experience of the benefits of IT in healthcare. It publishes papers that educate healthcare professionals on the use of IT in clinical practice, and particularly papers that provide objective evidence of the benefits of IT in healthcare.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2016

The internet based social network has been applied to serve many social functions, such as democratic decision making, knowledge sharing, education, and healthcare. In this paper, we provide a prototype of virtual community designed for home-based chronic diseases healthcare. We studied the concept "community" from the activity theory model in order to design the prototype with a solid theoretical base. Then we conducted a questionnaire from healthcare recipients and interviewed healthcare providers to gather the requirements for the design of the community. With some user stories we described the requirements as use cases for our design and a conceptual prototype is built based on the requirements. This virtual community servers as a shared platform for all the stakeholders who are engaged in the healthcare activity. With this shared community platform, the interoperability problems of current healthcare systems can be moderated.

International Journal of …, 2004

The growing numbers of elderly population impose an urgent need to develop new approaches to care provision. The convergence of a number of technologies such as multi-agent systems, federated information management, safe communications, hypermedia interfaces, rich sensorial environments, increased intelligence of home appliances, and collaborative virtual environments, represents an important enabling factor for the design and development of virtual elderly support community environments. In this paper, a platform based on mobile agents combined with federated information management mechanisms is introduced as a flexible infrastructure on top of which specialized care services can be built.

The 2005 Symposium on Applications and the Internet, 2005

of collaborative networks are increasingly emerging in diverse domains such as, for instance, elderly care. The growth in the elderly population imposes an urgent need to develop new approaches to care provision. Integration of a number of technologies such as multi-agent systems, federated information management, safe communications, hypermedia interfaces, rich sensorial environments, and increased intelligence in home appliances represents an important enabling factor for the design and development of virtual elderly support community environments. In this paper, the experience in developing an infrastructure based on mobile agents combined with federated information management mechanisms is described, as well as its initial evaluation as a basis to support the development of vertical valued-added services.

AbslraeI-The growing numbers of elderly population impose an urgent need to develop new approaches to care provision. The convergence of a number of technologies such as multi-agent systems, federated information management, safe communications, hypermedia interfaces. rich sensorial environments, increased intelligence of home appliances, and collaborative virtual environments, represents an important enabling factor for the dcsign and development of virtual elderly support community environments. In this paper, a platform based on mobile agents combined with federated information management mechanisms is introduccd as a flexible infrastructure on top of which specialized care services can be built.

2004

aims to improve the quality and safety of patient care, by encouraging and promoting the use of Information Technology (IT) in healthcare. The journal acts as a medium for the international exchange of knowledge and experience of the benefits of IT in healthcare. It publishes papers that educate healthcare professionals on the use of IT in clinical practice, and particularly papers that provide objective evidence of the benefits of IT in healthcare. Subscriptions The Journal on Information Technology in Healthcare is published 6 times a year. 2004 subscription prices (6 issues) are :

Background: Elderly prefer to be in their own homes rather than being in hospital or residential homes. Communication between elderly and community nurses is essential in caring and mutual interaction and modern technologies like MELCO provides the elderly the feeling of independence and safety. Aim: The aim of this paper is to describe the development of the social community model within the objectives of the MELCO project and its application within the community. Methodology: Three axes were taken in consideration: a) ontology, b) ecological theory and c) social network and information systems analyses for the development of the social community model. Four elderly women participated as a case study in piloting the mobile virtual system. The participants also responded to a short closed ended questionnaire. Results: The analysis of the questionnaire and the discussions with the participants showed that elders found the mobile system useful, easy to use and expressed the actual use of this would help them maintain active. Participants concern of social isolation or dependency on others seems to be trounced through the use of the mobile technology. Conclusions: MELCO social community model is a centric network that enables effective management and collaboration of social and health care teams around the elderly in the community. The teams are virtual, dynamic and collaborative.

Lancet, 2003

A few virtual community support systems, with so//Ze unsophisticated tools, appeared at the beginning of the era of llItemet availability and pervasive computing. Ever since however, //Zany such systems have emergedfocusing on classified interests and motivations, and aiming to give people more possibilities to socialize and keep in touch with each other. A growing population in Europe, the elderly, can benefitfrom the provision of such virtual communities and their services in order to maintain and promote their independent living, and to support their optimal mental, emotional, and physical health and well being.

International Journal of Computer Science & Applications, 2009

Today’s mobile devices have become increasingly powerful with enhanced features such as increased CPU power and memory, internet connectivity in multiple ways (multi-homing) and interfacing with external peripheral devices (for instance GPS receiver, medical sensors). The proliferation of these mobile devices combined with an increasing willingness of users to share information available on and around mobile device (e.g. location, user

Proceedings of the 14th Australasian User Interface Conference (AUIC 2013), Adelaide, Australia, 2013

The past decade has seen healthcare costs rising faster than government expenditure in most developed countries. Various telehealth solutions have been proposed to make healthcare services more efficient and cost-effective. However, existing telehealth systems are focused on treating diseases instead of preventing them, suffer from high initial costs, lack extensibility, and do not address the social and psychological needs of patients. To address these shortcomings, we have employed a user-centred approach and leveraged Web 2.0 technologies to develop Healthcare4Life (HC4L), an online telehealth system targeted at seniors. In this paper, we report the results of a 6-week user study involving 43 seniors aged 60 and above. The results indicate that seniors welcome the opportunity of using online tools for managing their health, and that they are able to use such tools effectively. Functionalities should be tailored towards individual needs (health conditions). Users have strong opinions about the type of information they would like to submit and share. Social networking functionalities are desired, but should have a clear purpose such as social games or exchanging information, rather than broadcasting emotions and opinions. The study suggests that the system positively changes the attitude of users towards their health management, i.e. users realise that their health is not controlled by health professionals, but that they have the power to positively affect their well-being.

Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, 2012

In existing healthcare systems, the focus is on clinical processes to assess the health condition of patients, making clinical decisions and applying therapeutic procedures all under control of health professionals. However, patients with chronic diseases usually face many disease related problems that are not immediately under control or supervision of a health professional. Taking patients with chronic cardiovascular diseases as an example, these patients are recommended to make a number of lifestyle changes: increase physical activity, change diet habits, quit smoking and adhere to a medication intake regime. In this paper we propose the use of Mobile Virtual Communities to enhance the empowerment of patients by providing the ICT mediated social support functionalities that assist patients to realize the lifestyle changes needed.

Abstract. One of the biggest challenges we currently face is to keep elderly people immersed in their social environment when they leave their home and enter a retirement home. Many of them feel isolated. The TV stands as their favorite media, and our first experiments showed that listening to vocalized local news and receiving TV messages and photos from family helped in fighting these feelings of isolation. With online social networks, we wish to involve the elderly in new types of interactions, more various and frequent. They will be more active and included in micro-conversations around multimedia contents. The retirement homes will benefit also from social networking capabilities. They will participate to the local news dedicated to the elderly people. In addition, the remote family will be informed of activities through an agenda and various publications. Keywords: Social Ties; Social Networks; Digital Life; Assistive Technology to Improve Quality of Life and Health for Seniors and their Caregivers; Platforms, Middleware and Software Architectures for Seniors; Real World Deployments and Experimentations in Smart Houses, Hospitals & Living communities.