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Abstract
As the number of elderly people rises, relatives’ care-taking responsibilities increase accordingly. This creates a need for developing new systems that enable relatives to keep track of aged family members. To develop new mobile services for elderly healthcare we tried to identify the most wanted features of a mobile user-interface from the perspective of relatives. Feature mapping was based on two online surveys: one administered to the relatives (N = 32) and nurses (N = 3) of senior citizens and the other to nursing students (N = 18). Results of the surveys, confirmed by face-to-face interviews of the relatives (N = 8), indicated that the most valued features of the mobile user-interface are Accident Reporting (e.g. falling), Alarms (e.g. fire-alarm), Doctor Visits and evaluation of the General Condition of the Senior. The averaged importance ratings of these features were 9.2, 9.0, 8.6 and 8.5, respectively (on a scale from 0 to 10). Other important considerations for the user-interface development are aspiration to simplicity and ease-of-use. We recommend that the results are taken into account, when designing and implementing mobile services for elderly healthcare.
Declaration of interest
The authors report no conflicts of interest.
This research was carried out under the banner of the SIMSALA project, funded by the European Fund for Regional Development and 5 companies: Ouman Ltd, Siperia Systems Ltd, Domuset Ltd, ZEF Solutions Ltd and City of Pudasjarvi. In addition, Metsolan Kartano and Metsolan Hovi, two Oulu-based nursing home companies, participated actively in the project as did the Kemi-Tornio University of Applied Sciences.