Silje Bøthun

The Use of Generative Techniques in Co-design of mHealth Technology and Healthcare Services for COPD Patients

People suffering from COPD commonly experience exacerbations leading to hospital admissions. mHealth technologies holds a potential for improved healthcare delivery to this group, with a possible impact on preventing COPD exacerbations. Designing appropriate technology and services for people with COPD requires an in-depth understanding of their needs, values and life situation. Co-design is an approach where users are actively involved in the design process, with democratic participation and empowerment at its center. We involved COPD patients in exploring their perspective on how mHealth technology and appurtenant healthcare services could support them. By the use of generative tools, we identified central aspects that the participants experienced to be of importance related to their health condition and disease. We here report on the main findings using this approach and on reflections on the process.

Ambient assistive technology considered harmful

Ambient assistive technology (AAT) is envisioned as a powerful tool for facing the growing demands the demographic change toward an aging society puts on care. While AAT is often expected to increase the quality of life of older people, this paper holds that relevant interventions often embody values that can contradict such visions, and in some cases even be harmful to care receivers. We argue that the strong focus AAT puts on illness and risk management reflects a medical model of care, which often disregards the psychosocial challenges that impairments and disabilities associated with old age can rise. We suggest that design of AAT could benefit from using the social model of care as design inspiration and value foundation. Such an approach puts focus on the person rather than the illness. The paper ends by providing a short description of work in which the social model of care is adopted as a basis for design of AAT.