Carrie Beth Peterson

Gerontechnology: Providing a Helping Hand When Caring for Cognitively Impaired Older Adults—Intermediate Results from a Controlled Study on the Satisfaction and Acceptance of Informal Caregivers

The incidence of cognitive impairment in older age is increasing, as is the number of cognitively impaired older adults living in their own homes. Due to lack of social care resources for these adults and their desires to remain in their own homes and live as independently as possible, research shows that the current standard care provisions are inadequate. Promising opportunities exist in using home assistive technology services to foster healthy aging and to realize the unmet needs of these groups of citizens in a user-centered manner. ISISEMD project has designed, implemented, verified, and assessed an assistive technology platform of personalized home care (telecare) for the elderly with cognitive impairments and their caregivers by offering intelligent home support services. Regions from four European countries have carried out long-term pilot-controlled study in real-life conditions. This paper presents the outcomes from intermediate evaluations pertaining to user satisfaction with the system, acceptance of the technology and the services, and quality of life outcomes as a result of utilizing the services.

The phenomenological experience of dementia and user interface development

This study follows ISISEMD through a phenomenological approach of investigating the experience of the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) for someone with dementia. The aim is to accentuate the Assistive Technology (AT) from the end user perspective. This paper supports that older adults and those with dementia should no longer be an overlooked population and how the HCI community can learn from their experiences to develop methods and design interfaces which truly benefit their target population. Guidelines from previous research are incorporated along with eclectic, user-centered strategies as the interface designers for project ISISEMD develop appropriate and effective modalities.

Telemedicine for Rural and Underserved Communities of Nepal

Health workers in rural health care serve most of the population in Nepal, but are isolated from specialist support and access to current medical information. Fortunately, the advent of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) has unleashed new opportunities for the delivery of health services. In Nepal, there are very remote and less developed communities with limited access to roads and poor infrastructure to access direct health services; here, telemedicine can be taken as the best alternative form to physically travelling and treating people. The strengths of telemedicine (TM) for remote populations include making specialty care more accessible, eliminating lengthy travel and costly transportation, and reducing the cost of some medical services in rural settings. This paper will focus on implications, barriers, proposed solutions, and future extensions of telemedicine in rural and remote places as well as a review on the kinds of services which are most appropriate in the context of Nepal. The main purpose of this paper is to explore practicability of telemedicine in Nepal and its scope of implementation and use.

A Review of Telemedicine Services in Finland

Telemedicine is gaining popularity due to the provision of ubiquitous health care services that is a fundamental need for every socialized society. In this paper, telemedicine services in Finland are discussed, as well as how they came into existence, how they are funded, evaluated, and what are their impacts on health care systems and society. Telemedicine services like teleradiology, telelaboratory, telepsychiatry and remote consultations, are being offered in all hospital districts. Primary health care centers in Finland are lacking telemedicine services, and are planning to have them. Electronic Patient Records (EPR), with e-referral and e-discharge letters, have prevented patients from unnecessary repeated laboratory examinations and treatments. The e-Archive (Finland’s national EPR) is in the planning stage, making EPR on national level, to promote ease of access to patient records and ubiquitous care. The e-Prescription project is also in the planning stage, which aims to enhance drug safety, prevent forged prescription, and prevent threat to a patient’s life.

Leased Line via Mobile Infrastructure for Telemedicine in India

Telemedicine is the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to exchange medical information for the purpose of health care and health education. In the context of developing countries, good health care facilities are concentrated in the urban cities, while they are still lacking in rural communities with lower economies. Telemedicine provides a best solution to solve this disparity of health sectors between urban and rural areas. In rural areas of developing countries, a reliable communication link for telemedicine is one of the key challenges. In the recent years, there is an increasing growth of mobile communication in developing countries that has saturated in urban cities and now growing towards the rural areas. This article focuses in India as a developing nation and discusses the cost effective use of widespread mobile communications infrastructure for communication link for telemedicine in rural areas.

A Novel Hierarchical Semi-centralized Telemedicine Network Architecture Proposition for Bangladesh

One of the major functions of telemedicine is the prompt delivery of modern healthcare to the remotest areas with reduced cost and efficient use of communication resources. The establishment of a well organized telemedicine system is therefore exigent for the developing countries like Bangladesh where there are extreme paucities of efficient healthcare professionals and equipments, specifically in the rural areas. In this paper a novel, hierarchical and semi-centralized telemedicine network architecture has been proposed holistically focusing on the rural underdeveloped areas of Bangladesh. The model utilizes the existing fiber optic backbone and wireless telecommunication infrastructures to connect the remote healthcare centers with the urban specialized hospitals. The proposed network is of low cost, flexible and faster as well as more concrete than the existing healthcare organogram of Bangladesh. Finally, some features and services associated with the model have also been proposed which are pragmatic and easily implementable.