Rationale and Methods of Evaluation for ACHO, A New Virtual Assistant to Improve Therapeutic Adherence in Rural Elderly Populations: A User-Driven Living Lab

Abstract

Low therapeutic adherence is a concern for health professionals as it decreases therapeutic efficiency while increasing costs, especially in elderly populations. To increase therapeutic adherence in elderly populations, the technology applied in the medical devices that are used must be adapted to improve usability. This paper outlines the rationale behind, and methods applied to assess the usability of, ACHO (Assistant on Care and Health Offline), a voice assistant that provides elderly patients with reminders of medical appointments to attend and when they need to take their medication. This work is a descriptive, cross-sectional, observational study, and will include a three-phase (analysis, testing and refinement) multidimensional usability analysis of an initial prototype, in the setting of a user-driven Living Lab, which enables the needs and characteristics of the end users to be identified and incorporated into the prototype with each iteration, in which a multidisciplinary team of researchers and users will participate as co-creators. This methodology will allow us to develop a better prototype, increasing usability and, thus, increasing therapeutic adherence.

Co-creating and evaluating social marketing programs: a living lab approach

“…Living Labs have been used in a range of social contexts, for example, to create a virtual assistant for therapeutic adherence of elders (Luengo-Polo et al , 2021), involve households in more sustainable heating and laundry practices (Matschoss et al , 2021) and promote digital participation in remote communities (Hughes et al , 2018). The Living Lab methodology has been applied with children and young people where an interactive totem was placed in the paediatric ward of a hospital to educate, entertain and empower hospitalised children (Vicini et al , 2012).…”

Vanderbilt Electronic Health Record Voice Assistant Supports Clinicians

“…Voice assistants have been used for a variety of tasks [2] including medication adherence [3] , data collection [4] , and companionship in adults [5] . While many clinicians use voice technology for non-clinical purposes, a minority also uses it in the clinical domain [6] .…”