In recent years, the advances in information and communication technology (ICT) have resulted in the development of systems and applications aimed at supporting rehabilitation therapy that contributes to enrich patients' life quality. This work is focused on the improvement of the telemedicine systems with the purpose of customizing therapies according to the profile and disability of patients. For doing this, as salient contribution, this work proposes the adoption of user-centered design (UCD) methodology for the design and development of telemedicine systems in order to support the rehabilitation of patients with neurological disorders. Finally, some applications of the UCD methodology in the telemedicine field are presented as a proof of concept.
Abstract. Patient Centered Design (PCD) is a particular type of User CenteredDesign (UCD) where the end-user is a patient that will use an Information and Communications Technology (ICT) solution for healthcare. It focuses on needs, wants and skills of the product's primary user and implies involving end-users in the decision-making and development process of the solution. e-Therapy aims to provide support to therapy sessions through ICT solutions. It has grown in the last years and in the mental health arena is being used for specific therapeutic contexts. It is an especially difficult environment due to specificities of the patients' conditions and where the physical access to patients is restricted and, sometimes, not even possible. Thus, a PCD approach can be accomplished through the health professionals involved, applying some of the most wellknown methods of UCD: interviews, questionnaires, focus groups and participatory design. eSchi is an e-Therapy tool that complements traditional practices for the cognitive rehabilitation and training of schizophrenic patients. It was successfully developed using a PCD approach.
This article discusses the convenience of adopting an approach of Collective Spatial Analysis in the P/PGIS processes, with the aim of improving the collection and integration of knowledge and local expertise in decision-making, mainly in the fields of planning and adopting territorial policies. Based on empirical evidence, as a result of the review of scientific articles from the Web of Science database, in which it is displayed how the knowledge and experience of people involved in decision-making supported by P/PGIS are collected and used, a prototype of a WEB-GSDSS application has been developed. This prototype allows a group of people to participate anonymously, in an asynchronous and distributed way, in a decision-making process to locate goods, services, or events through the convergence of their views. Via this application, two case studies for planning services in districts of Ecuador and Italy were carried out. Early results suggest that in P/PGIS local and external actors contribute their knowledge and experience to generate information that afterwards is integrated and analysed in the decision-making process. On the other hand, in a Collective Spatial Analysis, these actors analyse and generate information in conjunction with their knowledge and experience during the process of decision-making. We conclude that, although the Collective Spatial Analysis approach presented is in a subjective and initial stage, it does drive improvements in the collection and integration of knowledge and local experience, foremost among them is an interdisciplinary geo-consensus.
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