Ahmad Alaiad

The determinants of home healthcare robots adoption: an empirical investigation.

BACKGROUND Home healthcare robots promise to make clinical information available at the right place and time, thereby reducing error and increasing safety and quality. However, it has been frequently reported that more than 40% of previous information technology (IT) developments have failed or been abandoned due to the lack of understanding of the sociotechnical aspects of IT. OBJECTIVE Previous home healthcare robots research has focused on technology development and clinical applications. There has been little discussion of associated social, technical and managerial issues that are arguably of equal importance for robot success. To fill this knowledge gap, this research aims to understand the determinants of home healthcare robots adoption from these aspects by applying technology acceptance theories. METHODS We employed both qualitative and quantitative methods. The participants were recruited from home healthcare agencies located in the U.S. (n=108), which included both patients and healthcare professionals. We collected data via a survey study to test a research model. RESULTS The usage intention of home healthcare robots is a function of social influence, performance expectancy, trust, privacy concerns, ethical concerns and facilitating conditions. Among them, social influence is the strongest predictor. Monitoring vital signs and facilitating communication with family and medication reminders are the most preferable tasks and applications for robots. CONCLUSION Sociotechnical factors play a powerful role in explaining the adoption intention for home healthcare robots. The findings provide insights on how home healthcare service providers and robot designers may improve the success of robot technologies.

An Exploratory Study of Home Healthcare Robots Adoption Applying the UTAUT Model

The home healthcare initiative is aimed to reduce readmission costs, transportation costs, and hospital medical errors, and to improve post hospitalization healthcare quality, and enhance patient home independency. Today, it is almost unimaginable to consider this initiative without information technology. Home healthcare robots are one of such emerging technologies. Several robots have been developed to facilitate home healthcare such as remote presence robots e.g., RP2 and Paro. Most previous research in this area has focused on technology and implementation issues of home healthcare robots, but ignored the factors that influence their adoption. To address the limitation, the current research applied and extended the UTAUT model to the home healthcare domain. The model was tested using survey questionnaire. The empirical results not only confirmed the effects of some constructs from the original UTAUT model but also identified perceived security as a new factor that directly affects usage intention of home healthcare robots. In addition, effort expectancy did not show a direct effect but an indirect effect through performance expectancy on usage intention. Several practical and theoretical implications are also discussed.

A Conceptual Framework of Smart Home Context: An Empirical Investigation

Addressing the health problems of the 21st century will require individuals to use a new set of medical and public health resources that extend beyond historic and traditional medical devices and are built on current and smart information technologies. Much of these new medical tools was originally designed by device manufacturers to be used only in clinical settings and by trained healthcare professionals but recently are finding their way into the home nevertheless. Their migration to the home poses many challenges to both caregivers and care recipients. In order to facilitate their migration to the home, it is very important to first understand the domain boundary, its components and their interactions. Little research discusses the context of smart home healthcare and its surrounding entities to date. This paper aims to fill the knowledge gap by developing a framework of smart home healthcare context. To this end, the authors conducted semi-structured interviews with patients and health professionals served for or by home healthcare agencies on the east coast in the United States. They analyzed the content applying thematic approach. The findings revealed four major components of the framework including person, tasks, technologies, and environments. The findings also revealed to define the interactions between these components. The findings have significant implications for smart home designers and manufacturers, and service providers.

A simple present and past sentences machine translation from Arabic language (AL) to English language

The Arabic language is a collection of spoken dialects and a standard written language. The dialects show phonological, morphological, lexical, and syntactic. Differences, although the standard written language is the same throughout the Arab world. The present work reports our attempt in developing a bi-lingual Machine Translation tool for simple present and past sentences in an elementary school domain. The work described here is part of an ongoing research to automate the translation of user interfaces of knowledge-based systems. Our project tries to translate from a well-structured Arabic simple present and past sentence into a well-structured English sentence, by using a dictionary to translate a single word, and a simple lexicon consists of word categories and the meaning relative to categories in appropriate format. The domain area is an Arabic-English dictionary and a set of well-structured Arabic sentences from many textbooks in an elementary school.

Smart information technologies in home healthcare: An integrative adoption model

F radionuclide therapy, patients usually must remain hospitalized in special restricted access premises until radiation in their body drops below a certain level. During hospitalization, some of these patients can experience some complications or adverse reactions. It is of vital importance that doctor and nurse have audio-visual contact with patients, follow-up their vital functions and follow-up decline of radiation in their body during hospitalization. On the other hand, despite strict instructions given to them by physician and nurse before administration of radionuclide therapy, the patients often try to leave “restricted area”. In this case we need alarming system in order to achieve prompt alarming of the personnel when such case occurs, and be able to provide adequate measures. Telemedicine approach could be very useful as solution for all these challenges. We have developed comprehensive telemedicine system which covers four important fields: continuous on-line remote monitoring of patients’ vital functions registered with bed side monitor; video surveillance of area which use patients during hospitalization; continuous on-line monitoring of rest radioactivity in patients body and alarming system dedicated for case when patient attempt to leave the special restricted access premises. Our system consists of own developed hardware/software solutions for data acquisition and processing and established using Internet connection and services. We used our system for more than 500 patients who received radionuclide therapy. From our experience gained over the past 4 years, this telemonitoring system dedicated for patients receiving radionuclide therapy ensures a high level of safety for the patient and medical staff.T is a medical practice that involves remotely monitoring patients who are not at the same location as the health care provider. Purpose of the study to use tele-ECG and using blue tooth enabled mobile technology developed by BARC. m-Health technology involves use of mobile phone for providing health care services to population residing in remote rural areas where doctor to patient ratio is low. TeleECG is a Blue tooth enabled device which can record and transmit data to a mobile phone. The ECG is a non-invasive test that is used to reflect underlying heart conditions by measuring the electrical activity of the heart. By positioning leads (electrical sensing devices) on the body in standardized locations, information about many heart conditions can be recorded. We have done ECG on 400 normal individuals at remote locations and transmitted it to doctors. The recording was made by health workers trained to perform these procedures. Informed consent was taken from all the participants before enrollment. We found good correlation between the traditional machine and hand held machine for ECG recording. Mobile application development based on the application framework was demonstrated successfully. The platform applies a document-based approach providing a versatile and reliable way of sharing and collaboratively complementing of health information including standard information model documents and integration with health information systems and personal storages. The implemented mobile tele-ECG case demonstrates the overall function of the platform. The platform can be used as a basis for developing new applications for specific purposes.I has been frequently reported that more than 40% of previous information technology (IT) developments in various sectors including the health sector have failed or been abandoned due to the lack of understanding of the socio-technical, cognitive, affective and contextual aspects of IT. Smart home healthcare information technologies (sH2IT) are one of the emerging technologies that hold promise to make clinical information available at the right place and time, thereby reducing error and increasing safety and quality of care. Existing sH2IT research has focused on technology development and clinical applications with limited discussion of the above aspects. The main goal of this research is to develop an integrative adoption model to sH2IT. The researchers used a mixed method design that combined interview (N=15) and survey (N=270) over two studies. The participants were recruited from home healthcare agencies on the east coast of the U.S including both patients and health professionals. The researchers analyzed the data of the two studies using Kvale’s approach and Partial Least Square (PLS), respectively. The findings of the qualitative study identified various themes in relation to sH2IT adoption, including human detachment concerns, legal concerns, security concerns, privacy concerns, life quality expectancy and cost concerns. In addition, the findings of the quantitative study provided empirical support for the research model built based on the findings of qualitative study. The model has substantial predictive power accounting for more than half of the variance of sH2IT adoption. The findings provide insights on how home healthcare service providers and technology designers may improve the success of sH2IT technologies.