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Case Studies of Services for Assistive Technology Maurice Mulvenna 4 December 2014

Outline

•  2010 research from Ofcom Advisory Committee on Older and Disabled people (ACOD)

•  Potential benefits of next-generation services •  Case studies:

•  COGKNOW •  NOCTURNAL •  Co-creating service design for reablement •  Co-designing social prescriptions services to

support people with long-term conditions •  Conclusions

Potential benefits of next-generation services

Potential benefits of next-generation services

•  To identify: •  New and near-future Next Generation Services that

have the potential to benefit older and disabled people’s lives •  Includes existing services that could be enriched as a result

of faster broadband connections •  Potential benefits from such services •  Risks and challenges to potential benefit realisation •  Examining health and wellbeing, work and education,

leisure as well as other day-to-day services

Technology trends

•  Cloud computing •  Software as a service •  Personalised interfaces •  Ubiquitous mobile •  Multi-modal high presence display systems

Health & Wellbeing Trends

•  The research identified nascent trends that could benefit from superfast broadband:

•  Remote interaction; •  TV as communication interface; •  Activity, health and wellbeing monitoring

Health & Wellbeing

•  Prolonged independent living; •  Increased physical and psychological health and

wellbeing; •  Improved motivation and self-management of health; •  Increased sense of wellbeing and security; •  More efficient, cost-effective, and targeted delivery of

services; •  More accessible communication systems.

Potential Benefits

“... through access to health trend information, people can improve their own health expectations.”

Risks

•  Accessibility •  Logistics, e.g. seamless technical integration •  Impact, e.g. potential for increased isolation or

dependence

Key risks and challenges

Issues

•  Infrastructure: ensuring adequate, reliable network infrastructure and connectivity;

•  Usability and accessibility: international co-ordination to support development of accessible products

•  Cost: ensuring people are not excluded due to affordability

•  Implementation: more coordinated interaction between stakeholders to minimise the logistical risks

Summary

•  Next Generation Services promise the potential of numerous benefits to older or disabled people.

•  If the challenges to their implementation are addressed appropriately, the opportunities for increased and easier access to services could:

•  promote more independent living and participation; and

•  help older and disabled people to lead healthier and more fulfilling lives

Case studies of services for assistive technology

Cognitive support for people with dementia

COGKNOW

•  To develop and evaluate a user-validated remotely configurable cognitive prosthetic device with associated services for people with mild dementia

•  Helping people navigate their day: •  Reminding function •  Activity support •  Activity assistance •  Safety warnings

Helping people with dementia to navigate their day

COGKNOW Helping people with dementia to navigate their day

Night Optimised Care Technology for UserRs Needing Assisted Lifestyles

Provide therapeutic support and guidance to this group of people during the hours of darkness

–  Investigate the needs of people with dementia at night time

–  Research new technological capabilities that support sophisticated service offerings

–  Offer therapeutic interventions using music and familiar images of loved ones at bedside device

–  Sleep measurements variables: quantity of sleep, quality of sleep, rhythm of sleep

Night Optimised Care Technology for UserRs Needing Assisted Lifestyles

Night Optimised Care Technology for UserRs Needing Assisted Lifestyles

Co-creating service design Reablement

Reablement

•  Supporting people such as the elderly to live in their own homes whilst providing a programme underpinning the skills and confidence necessary for daily living

•  Rollout of reablement services in Belfast providing interventions for older city dwellers

Project structure

•  Working with social enterprises: •  Ardmonagh Family and Community Group, •  Engage with Age, •  Volunteer Now, •  Oasis Caring in Action, and •  Shopmobility Belfast

Project plan

•  Ideation events •  Hackathons •  Capture user stories •  Agile software

development •  Validation by

stakeholders •  Scale up

Research questions

•  Explore if the location context and mix of participants created a beneficial effect in the process of capturing the needs of the stakeholders. Specifically,

•  Does this kind of experimental co-creation process support ideation, and how?

•  How does the creation of a ‘pop-up’ living lab that brings together the triple-helix of partners - plus users work?

So what could a successful pathway look like?

•  coders and carers •  ideation events •  mix the blend •  harmonise towards

user stories •  hack user interfaces •  build stakeholder

community

Ideation outcomes

•  Data capture •  Data sharing •  Service Directory •  Governance •  Assessment model

Conclusions

•  Experimental co-creation process does support ideation

•  Empowering heterogeneous groups of people from different domains of knowledge and levels of expertise to ideate freely and generate new knowledge

•  Leads to an improvement in the appropriateness and quality of the resulting service design

Designing Social Prescription Services Supporting People with Long-Term Conditions

•  Obesity claimed to be the world's largest single cause of mortality and morbidity in 21st Century with 40% of UK obese by 2025

•  Main causes are sedentary lifestyle with easy access to low-cost, high-fat food

•  Problem is how to build engagements with the pre-diabetic obese to bring about sustainable change in lifestyle behaviour

•  Paying customer is health trust but user is overweight person (This is a society must-have but a user nice-to-have)

•  Costs to health service to double in next 25 year (‘Diabetes threatens to bankrupt the NHS’ – Guardian 2012)

Problem

Problem

Social prescriptions

•  Links patients in primary care with non-medical sources of support within the community

•  “People with little money/time should have services from the likes of government that don't add to the burden of decision making”

- Eldar Shafir, Scarcity

Personas

•  “low income people and families are over-represented within the obese, pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes populations”

•  “… as a value brand it needs to offer low-income consumers real benefits”

•  “connecting behaviour modifying innovation to the hot spots that need it”

Psychosocial model

Habits   Beliefs  

A-tudes  

Design Approach

•  Adoption of design process to: •  Establish project requirements •  Understand user groups •  Consider user experience (UX) issues •  Develop and test User Interface (UI)

•  Co-Design – working with client & students over different physical and digital spaces

•  Discover and develop workshops with groupings •  Discover user tasks (n=20)

•  User personas •  User journeys •  User scenarios

•  Develop ideas into prototypes (n=45) •  Disseminate digital prototypes

Develop ideas into prototypes

How different from these?

Differences

•  More blended model of medical and social information •  Location-based services focus on:

•  Activity measurement •  Sign posting to local social prescriptions

•  Gamification – “The Biggest Loser”

Conclusions

•  Individuals at a lower socio-economic level or status represent a hard-to-reach group of people who are often time and cash poor and may benefit from greater clarity in social prescription messages and communications aimed at improving their health literacy and subsequently their self-management behaviour and physical and mental health.

Conclusions

•  A tailored approach to health and wellbeing improvement ensures that specific conditions and behaviours are assessed before the introduction of the individual to a ‘social’ activity or initiative.

•  Therefore, the likelihood of engagement is stronger given the individual's involvement in choosing from a suite of options available to them in their local area.

Conclusions

•  Prevalence of smartphone and tablet computing uptake in NI is now significant

•  Opportunity for a value brand for those in need of personalised social prescription to be delivered using smartphone technology

•  Next steps are to revisit the user groups and design live prototype

but…

Thanks!

•  Potential benefits of next-generation services: All at Ofcom, ACOD committee members especially Dr Laura Muir, and Dr Jonathan Freeman / Dr Jane Lessiter from I2 Research

•  COGKNOW: Persons with dementia and their carers who participated in the COGKNOW field tests in Amsterdam, Belfast and Luleå. The project was supported by the European Commission’s Information Society Technologies (IST) programme under grant 034025.

•  NOCTURNAL: Carers and people with dementia in Northern Ireland who contributed to the work of the Nocturnal project, which is supported by the United Kingdom Research Councils and the Technology Strategy Board’s Assisted Living Innovation Platform under grant award TS/G002452/1.

•  Co-creating service design for reablement: Thanks to Ardmonagh Family and Community Group, Engage with Age, Volunteer Now, Oasis Caring in Action, and Shopmobility Belfast for their enthusiasm and participation, Invest NI Innovation Voucher programme for their financial support in this project, and to Age NI, Bryson Care and Belfast Health & Social Care Trust for their farsightedness. Special thanks to Farset Labs for running the hackathons.

•  Co-designing social prescriptions services to support people with long-term conditions: The authors wish to recognise the support of Invest NI’s Innovation Voucher programme. Many thanks to Design at Magee year 2 students and also to Mark Cullen and Padraic Lynch from the University of Ulster’s design team who helped design and run the workshops. Students were supervised by module co-ordinator and design lecturer Terry Quigley from the University of Ulster.

Acknowledgements