Special Section on Smart Wearable Devices for Human Health and Protection (original) (raw)
in Design for the health emergency
Convergences - Journal of Research and Arts Education
The Pandemic has forced change, raising questions about design models, business models, incentives and community education. The urgency of containment measures has redefined the role of health and highlighted the role of Design, which is involved in emergency situations, in designing the universe of protective devices, intervening with Human Centered Design approaches, proposing shared strategies that translate the knowledge and experience of the most advanced research into products. The case study collects the results obtained from the elaboration of the research project financed by the Campania Region, “Smart&Safe. Design for new personal protective equipment” submitted to the call for the acquisition of research and development services for the fight against Covid-19. The research constitutes a substantial study of the problems related to health emergencies and proposes an update in the redesign of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), now in a plural Intelligent Individual Protec...
Interacting with Computers
This paper provides an empirical understanding of concerns that the application of a sensorenhanced medical alert system, or personal emergency response (PER) system, raises from the perspective of care receivers (users) and care providers. Data were gathered in the context of a field trial of a PER system supporting both user-initiated alerts and automatic fall detection alerts. The system was tested at two residential care facilities for 3 weeks. Drawing on data primarily from post-trial group and pair interviews, we describe and compare care receivers' and providers' views on the following emerging concerns: (i) form factor and ergonomics, (ii) system feedback and user control and (iii) sensor precision and trust. Based on feedback from stakeholder groups, we discuss potential value biases, or discriminating factors, embedded in the evaluated PER system. We also discuss the implications of our findings for a value-driven design agenda for future PER systems. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS • Assistive technology comes with embedded values that have implications for the care situation, independently of the user's or the designer's, original intent. • The findings from the study indicate that users (care receivers) and professional care providers have different concerns related to the use of sensor-enhanced PER systems and different perspectives on how these types of systems can add value. • The different perspectives held by users and their professional care providers are not necessarily incompatible. There may be room for design to negotiate diverse perspectives and value priorities. • Designing for users' safety is not only about designing for immediate emergency situations (e.g. accidental falls). It is also about designing systems and devices that seamlessly integrate into mundane physical and social activities of users' everyday lives.
Designing Affordable Technologies to Integrate Citizens in Early Warning Activities
UCAmI 2018, 2018
Early warning consists of monitoring precursors of a potential hazard to understand if it is evolving to a real risk and then be able to orchestrate an early response before the event happens in order to reduce its impact and damages. It mainly consists on collecting updated and reliable data that can help emergency operators to understand how a situation is evolving and project its consequences, that is, to support situation awareness on a potential risk. This process could be improved by integrating volunteers and citizens into the data collection process given that they are intelligent sensors equipped with mobile devices that can be used almost everywhere to collect and share information. In this paper we introduce a system relying upon ubiquitous computing to integrate citizens in checking the evolution of potential hazards. An asynchronous focus group technique to assess the system with EM professionals is also described in the paper.
Gerontechnology
ISSUE The Gerontechnology literature reveals a variety of high-tech approaches designed to help older adults function in their daily lives with a greater degree of independence than they might otherwise, given their physical health and cognitive status. Many older adults experience a heightened sense of security secondary to this use of technology. Speakers will address the validity of this perception in the context of emergencies and disasters. Emergencies and disasters are increasing worldwide , secondary to factors including climate change, human pressures on the environment, infrastructure failure and armed conflict. Mounting evidence suggests that older people suffer disproportionately in emergencies and disasters as a consequence of largely remediable factors. CONTENT Emergency Management (EM) includes a wide range of activities that aim to create a state of preparedness to deal with emergencies should they occur, enable response as needed, facilitate recovery in the short to midterm, and mitigate risk for emergencies and disasters over the long term. The presentations will explore what needs to be done to actualize the potential for gerontechnology to make a substantive, unique and potentially lifesaving contribution to the call for sound and effective practices, protocols and resources in all phases of EM. STRUCTURE Robert Roush will provide an overview of the key issues at the intersection of Geriatric Emergency Preparedness and Response (GEPR) and gerontechnology, including the potential utilization of personal emergency response services (PERS) to abate risk for seniors in emergency situations. Sandi Hirst will present an analysis of key issues that uniquely impact the most vulnerable segment of the seniors' population: frail older adults who reside in congregate living situations, whose outcomes in emergencies and disasters are almost fully dependent on the integrity of their technological and human resource support systems. Laurie Mazurik will describe the application of existing communication technologies to meet the unique information and support needs of older adults in the response phase of an emergency or disaster, including findings from simulation research. Gloria Gutman will review the evidence base on use of technology as a support for seniors in recent natural disasters in Canada and internationally, drawing on case studies commissioned by the Public Health Agency of Canada and partners. Following the presentations there will be an open discussion led by Maggie Gibson, focused on applying the expertise and insights of the audience to this pressing but under-recognized issue. CONCLUSION It is time to look beyond the day-today applications of gerontechnology and explore how technological solutions that increase safety and capacity for older adults on a routine basis can be utilized to combat their disproportionate vulnerability and increase their resilience in large-scale emergencies and disasters.
Smart Garments for Emergency Operators: The ProeTEX Project
IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine, 2000
Financed by the European Commission, a consortium of 23 European partners, consisting of universities, research institutions, industries and organizations operating in the field of emergency management, is developing a new generation of "smart" garments for emergency-disaster personnel. Garments integrate newly developed wearable and textile solutions as like as commercial portable sensors and devices, in order to continuously monitor risks endangering rescuers' lives. The system enables detection of health state parameters of the users (heart rate, breathing rate, body temperature, blood oxygen saturation, position, activity and posture) and environmental variables (external temperature, presence of toxic gases and heat flux passing through the garments), to process data and remotely transmit useful information to the operation manager.
An Investigation into the Rise of Wearable Technologies in the Healthcare Sector
Lecture notes in computer science, 2024
Wearable technologies and self-tracking healthcare apps are becoming increasingly popular among people all over the world. Moreover, with the rapid increase in tech-nological advancements, studies on the ease of use and intent to adopt wearable de-vices have gained prominence in the aftermath of the Covid-19 Pandemic. More specifically, fitness wearables have grown in popularity as health consciousness among the younger and older populations has grown, allowing them to track and monitor their heart rate, calories, sleep, and steps taken throughout the day. These wearable technologies are considered to have a wide range of applications ranging from the workplace to recreational activities. Several studies have shown how the emergence of wearable technology will benefit society, but fewer studies have inte-grated the practical implementations of wearable technologies and wearable devices which is utilised for personalised healthcare applications. As a result, the current study employs a bibliometric approach using Scopus databases to refine articles re-lated to health tracking applications, remote patient monitoring, chronic disease management, and infectious disease prevention. In doing so, the findings of the study are portrayed in conjunction with VOSviewer, which showcases the key clusters and studies that are related to wearable technologies and their applications as physiolog-ical and biometric sensors. More specifically, the findings show that most studies emphasise on how wearable technologies are concentrated as physiological sensors to track important information about an individual's health, as well as how wearable technologies are widely adopted among older populations and can track critical dis-eases, enabling effective remote patient monitoring in healthcare fields. Finally, the paper concludes by acknowledging the risks and privacy concerns of using wearable technologies within the healthcare sector.
European Heart Journal
When disaster strikes, the time to prepare has passed.' Steven Cyros On 6 February 2023, Turkey and Syria were hit by two catastrophic earthquakes followed by thousands of aftershocks. These events tragically affected around 9.1 million people in Turkey and 8.8 million people in Syria, causing 50,000 and 5900 deaths, respectively. More than 3 million people in Turkey and around half a million in Syria were displaced. 1 As a cardiology community, we need to know what we can do to prepare our healthcare system and our patients to mitigate future crises. Earthquakes, like many natural disasters, are associated with negative health impacts. Earthquake survivors have a significant increase in major adverse cardiovascular events like myocardial infarction (MI), stroke, heart failure (HF), and arrhythmia as well as increased atherosclerotic risk factors. 2 Multiple mechanisms contribute to these events, without taking into consideration the impact of earthquakes on cardiovascular care and services because of infrastructure damage. 2 To mitigate the effect of natural disasters on healthcare during and after the event, it is crucial to adapt a disaster risk management plan, with preparedness being an important component. 3 As part of being prepared, all facilities should be assessed for risk regarding their current infrastructure, 4 capacity, and essential cardiac services, especially in areas that are vulnerable to natural disasters like earthquakes. After facility assessment, cardiac wards, and catheterization units should be maintained, expanded, and/or remodelled so they can face future challenges. Adequate funding and disaster/emergency budgets are mandatory for risk management planning. Proper authorization schemes can prevent delays in emergency patient management since telephone and internet communications are usually damaged following earthquakes. Natural disasters highlight the importance of establishing electronic health records (EHR) in different national healthcare systems. It is vital
Wearable Devices and mHealth: The Significant Applications in COVID 19 Pandemic
Journal of Pharmaceutical Research International, 2022
Wearable devices (WDs) and mHealth (Mobile Health) give you the healthcare services, overcoming geographical, temporal or even organizational obstacles. Wearable technologies will have non-encroaching and sovereign devices that collect save and examine physiological information that will certainly help to improve patient health. It has been used so far for fitness purposes. But with increasing demand by patients and health care workers, wearable devices have also been developed to monitor patient health-related issues. It collects and analyses data. In some scenarios makes a sensible decision and provide a suitable response to the users. Now a day, mobile applications have also proven effective in the field of medicine with the motto of giving personalized treatment to disease control. Advanced technology in wearable gadgets has become a great aspect of our day-to day life in addition to the health care industry. A global pandemic that the world is facing in the form of COVID19 has ...
Wearable services in risk management
Web Intelligence and …, 2009
In this paper, the key ideas of ambient intelligence, wearable objects and service-oriented computing are combined so that appliances and devices can disappear and become part of the work garments and environment of the individual and, as an effect, services emerge to face risky situations through reaction to alarms and to perform risk management. Along this line, we outline the features of a wearablebased services system aimed at improving safety in work places.