Development of a Healthcare Service Platform for Successful Aging

The purpose of the living-lab clinical trials is to develop contactless digital health monitoring system and individually customizable health status feedback contents in order to improve self-care capacity and mental health of older adults who live alone. Also, the current trials aim to evaluate effectiveness and usability of the overall developed monitoring platform. The effectiveness evaluation will investigate whether the platform can be effective at detecting levels of health decline or improvements and connecting in-person healthcare services. The usability tests will focus on user-centeredness, efficiency, and usability for older adults and their community healthcare provider.

To accomplish the purposes, the platform was developed based on needs assessments and observations of living environments of community dwelling older adults using surveys and interviews. Community healthcare providers also participated interview on their needs as a caregiver and working conditions that need to be considered to develop applications and website for community caregivers.

The developed platform will be tested by younger adults for a pilot test and be tested by older adult users and their matched controls for the main clinical trials. The older adults participants will be recruited via postings and study information sessions at the community senior welfare center in Seoul, South Korea. Interested older adults and community healthcare service providers will be invited to participation in the trials. After recruiting the living lab older adults, age and gender matched control older adults will be recruited. Older adult participants will be those who are over 65 years old and do not have cognitive and sensory disorders (e.g., deafness or dementia) that may inhibit participation in the trials.

The living lab will be conducted for 6 weeks, starting with a 1-week adaptation period. Older adults will be asked to open the smartphone application in the morning; the application would automatically link them to a chatbot asking how they are doing and 2 questions on daily depressive symptoms.

After using the chatbot, the participants will be able to see their daily health status information for stress (via high frequency measure (HF) of heart rate variability (HRV)), sleep (via total sleep time and sleep fragmentation), and physical activity (via steps) on the previous day, compared to their own average during the first week of the living lab.

Their voice records and daily health status will be sent to their matched community caregiver via a study website. A manager at the senior welfare center will be able to monitor any health emergency by participated older adults via the study website.

During the living lab period, the older adult participants will be asked to wear a smartwatch continuously except while the battery is being charged. For the effectiveness and usability evaluations, both living lab and control participants will be invited to surveys before, during, and after the 6 week periods. Community caregivers and managers will evaluate the effectiveness and usability via a survey and interview after the 6 week living lab period.

Inclusion criteria

• Community dwelling older adults who are 65 years old and older

Exclusion criteria

• Older adults with cognitive, sensory, and functional problems that may hinder them from participating surveys.
• Older adults with iOS mobile device that would not allow them to use the developed mobile application.
• Older adults in nursing home or who are hospitalized because this platform is designed to support independent living of an older adults in their home.