Elderly persons' perception and acceptance of using wireless sensor networks to assist healthcare
By R. Steele, Amanda Lo, Chirstopher Secombe, Y. Wong. Int. J. Medical Informatics, 2009
522 citations recorded by the source corpus.
PURPOSE This is an exploratory study carrying out qualitative research into the perceptions, attitudes and concerns of elderly persons towards wireless sensor network (WSN) technologies in terms of their application to healthcare. This work aims to provide guidance on the dimensions and items that may be included in the development of a more in-depth questionnaire to further validate the importance of the identified factors as well as the relationships between them. This study aims to contribute to opening up a communication channel between users and researchers, informing the research community in relation to applications and functionalities that users deem as either desirable, inadequate or in need of further development. METHODS Focus groups were conducted with elderly individuals who were still living independently. To explore elderly persons' perceptions and thoughts on current wireless sensor network (WSN) technologies and designs, discussion points were designed from concepts identified from various user acceptance theories and models. Participants were given an introduction to explain the functionality and capabilities of WSN and motes and were shown a sample mote, the Crossbow Mica2Dot. Participants were then asked to discuss their perceptions and concerns towards the likelihood of using a WSN-based healthcare system in their home. FINDINGS We have identified sixteen concepts in relation to the elderly participants' perception, concerns and attitudes towards WSN systems. Those concepts were further classified into six themes describing the determinants that may affect an elderly person's acceptance of WSNs for assisting healthcare. Some of our exploratory findings in this study indicate for example that independence is highly valued by elderly people and hence any system or technology that can prolong that independence tends to be highly regarded, that privacy of WSN health data might not be as important as typically considered, and there are also indications that cost may be the most prominent determinant influencing an elderly person's acceptance of WSNs. CONCLUSIONS Our findings indicate that participants' attitudes towards the idea of wireless sensor networks for health monitoring are generally positive. The exploratory findings along with the literature suggest a number of relationships which can be used in future survey design and model building.
Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Demography
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f5763d2c8f0f4eac3a33e1f54486c08860ee25ea
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Citations in the corpus
- Older adults: Are they ready to adopt health-related ICT? (2013, unknown): “Facilitating issues Factors related to the external environment, such as availability of support [27,39,48,54]”
- Acceptance and Use of Health Information Technology By Community-Dwelling Elders (2014, background): “he research on assistive technology informs the discussion round acceptance of new tools, and patients often have postive views of these tools [32].”
- Factors influencing acceptance of technology for aging in place: A systematic review (2014, methodology): “, 2009 [42] – × – × – Qualitative Focus groups 13 Australia Courtney et al.”
- PERSPECTIVE: Older Adults' Adoption of Technology: An Integrated Approach to Identifying Determinants and Barriers (2015, background): “In the case of home technology, it has been reported that older adults dislike having to share their health information and being photographed or watched (Steele et al., 2009).”
- Wireless sensor networks for healthcare: A survey (2010, unknown): “Privacy is of most importance although in the study conducted with randomly selected seniors from several elderly community groups in Australia, the authors suggest that privacy of health information is not perceived as a highly significant concern and does not have a significant effect on an elderl”
- UniMiB SHAR: A Dataset for Human Activity Recognition Using Acceleration Data from Smartphones (2016, background): “For what concerns fall detection, several studies concluded that, in order to be used, fall detection devices must not stigmatize people nor disturb their daily life [14, 15, 16].”
- Dynamic-MUSIC: accurate device-free indoor localization (2016, background): “In elderly care, the elders are usually reluctant [34] to carry mobile or wearable devices.”
- Mobile Applications for Diabetics: A Systematic Review and Expert-Based Usability Evaluation Considering the Special Requirements of Diabetes Patients Age 50 Years or Older (2014, background): “Additionally, a user-based test would not have been able to represent the pronounced heterogeneity among the age group 50 or older regarding health status, skills and preferences, experience in technology use, sociodemographics, etc, which is much more pronounced than for younger age groups [13,15,2”