Measuring the Use of the Active and Assisted Living Prototype CARIMO for Home Care Service Users: Evaluation Framework and Results

Abstract

To address the challenges of aging societies, various information and communication technology (ICT)-based systems for older people have been developed in recent years. Currently, the evaluation of these so-called active and assisted living (AAL) systems usually focuses on the analyses of usability and acceptance, while some also assess their impact. Little is known about the actual take-up of these assistive technologies. This paper presents a framework for measuring the take-up by analyzing the actual usage of AAL systems. This evaluation framework covers detailed information regarding the entire process including usage data logging, data preparation, and usage data analysis. We applied the framework on the AAL prototype CARIMO for measuring its take-up during an eight-month field trial in Austria and Italy. The framework was designed to guide systematic, comparable, and reproducible usage data evaluation in the AAL field; however, the general applicability of the framework has yet to be validated.

Exploring the effectiveness of a fitness‐app prototype for home care service users in Austria and Italy

“…TG participants received the fitness‐app prototype on a tablet (Samsung Tab A 2016) and a customised activity tracker (Samsung Gear Fit2), paired with the fitness app, for 8 months. The fitness app prototype comprised video clips of fitness exercises, a summary overview of physical activities and rewards, and a weekly tip to promote physical activity in general (Schneider et al., 2020; Trukeschitz & Blüher, 2018a). The exercise programme consisted of six daily changing exercises with two repetitions each.…”

“…The program included a built‐in hidden time count, which ensured that completed exercises were only counted after a pre‐set reasonable time for doing this exercise (on average, 30 s). The app also provided access to electronic newspapers, the internet and games (Schneider et al., 2020). The CG received no technology, but shopping vouchers after completing all three questionnaires.…”

“…For assessing the group‐specific treatment effect , we included an indicator for the TG. For assessing the effect resulting from the frequency of using the fitness programme (Schneider et al., 2020), we employed logged usage data of both the activity tracker and two features of the app that closely relate to the outcome indicators (‘summary overview of physical activities’ and ‘fitness exercises’). We identified four user groups on a monthly basis: ‘frequent’ (3), ‘regular’ (2), ‘infrequent’ (1), ‘non’‐users (0), for each app feature and the activity tracker (Schneider et al., 2020).…”

User Requirements Analysis of an Embodied Conversational Agent for Coaching Older Adults to Choose Active and Healthy Ageing Behaviors during the Transition to Retirement: A Cross-National User Centered Design Study

“…All the key components of a healthy and active ageing framework have captured the interest of various research fields in the area of innovative technologies and aging with the aim to find cost-effective solutions to support independent living and care provision [ 30 , 31 ] through digital coaching. Moreover, the efficacy of digital health coaching solutions is still little explored, despite there being a few examples [ 32 ] targeting people aged 65 and over [ 33 ] and also older workers aged between 55 and 67 years [ 34 ]. However, the few studies dealing with this issue give pretty strong evidence that web-based health promotion programs for older adult workers can improve their health conditions [ 35 , 36 ].…”

Adapted Binary Particle Swarm Optimization for Efficient Features Selection in the Case of Imbalanced Sensor Data

“…The challenges of the aging population [3] have been addressed by various types of information and communication technology (ICT) systems in the last years, but few of them evaluated the challenges related to the acceptance and to the usability of the ambient assisted living (AAL) systems [4]. Those challenges are even more complex in particular cases, such as the ones where the elders have symptoms of dementia [5] or symptoms of Parkinson's disease [6].…”