Engagement in Health Care From the Perspective of Older Adults.

Patient engagement is essential for improving health outcomes and lowering health care costs. The use of patient portals is becoming increasingly important for patient health care engagement. A convenience sample of 100 community-dwelling older adults completed a battery of surveys to explore the use of patient portals as an engagement tool.

Predictors of Patient Portal Use Among Community-Dwelling Older Adults.

Older adults lag behind their younger counterparts in the use of patient portals, which may limit their ability to engage in health care. A better understanding of the factors associated with portal use among older adults is needed. We examined the proportion of 100 community-dwelling older adults who reported using a portal, the associations between sociobehavioral factors and portal use, and modeled predictors of portal use.

A Qualitative Study of Preparation for Lumbar Spinal Stenosis Surgery: Perceptions of Patients and Physical Therapists.

Objectives: To gain the perspectives of patients who underwent lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) surgery and physical therapists who treat spine-related disorders regarding rehabilitation and other care prior to LSS surgery.

Design: Qualitative focus group study.

Methods: Sixteen patients (4 female; average ± SD age, 64.

Optimizing a Text Message Intervention to Reduce Heavy Drinking in Young Adults: Focus Group Findings.

Background: Recent trial results show that an interactive short message service (SMS) text message intervention, Texting to Reduce Alcohol Consumption (TRAC), is effective in reducing heavy drinking in non-treatment-seeking young adults, but may not be optimized.

Objective: To assess the usability of the TRAC intervention among young adults in an effort to optimize future intervention design.

Methods: We conducted five focus groups with 18 young adults, aged 18-25 years, who had a history of heavy drinking and had been randomized to 12 weeks of the TRAC intervention as part of a clinical trial.

Wearable Technology to Garner the Perspective of Dementia Family Caregivers.

Family caregivers of individuals with dementia typically have limited opportunity during brief clinical encounters to describe the dementia-related behaviors and interactions they find difficult to handle. Lack of objective data depicting the nature, intensity, and impact of these manifestations of the underlying disease further constrains the extent to which strategies recommended by nurses or other health care providers can be tailored to the situation. The current article describes a prototype wearable camera system used to gather image and voice data from the caregiver's perspective in a pilot feasibility intervention study conducted with 18 caregiving dyads.

Caregivers' Willingness to Pay for Technologies to Support Caregiving.

Purpose Of The Study: We report the results of a study designed to assess whether and how much informal caregivers are willing to pay for technologies designed to help monitor and support care recipients (CRs) in performing kitchen and personal care tasks.

Design And Methods: We carried out a web survey of a national sample of adult caregivers (age 18-64) caring for an older adult (N = 512). Respondents completed a 25min online survey that included questions about their caregiving situation, current use of everyday technology, use of specific caregiving technologies, general attitudes toward technology, and questions about technologies designed to help them monitor and provide assistance for CRs' kitchen and self-care activities.

Usability testing of a prototype multi-user telehealth kiosk.

The overall purpose of this study was to learn how community-dwelling older adults would interact with our prototype multi-user telehealth kiosk and their views about its usability. Seven subjects participated in laboratory-based usability sessions to evaluate the physical design, appearance, functionality and perceived ease of use of a multi-user telehealth kiosk prototype. During usability testing participants recommended 18 new features (29% of comments), identified 15 software errors (23% of comments) and 29 user interface errors (47% of comments).

A type 2 diabetes prevention website for african americans, Caucasians, and mexican americans: formative evaluation.

Background: The majority of Americans now access the Internet, thereby expanding prospects for Web-based health-related education and intervention. However, there remains a digital divide among those with lower income and education, and among Spanish-speaking populations in the United States. Additional concerns are the low eHealth literacy rate among these populations and their interest in Internet-delivered interventions with these components.

Willingness to pay for quality of life technologies to enhance independent functioning among baby boomers and the elderly adults.

Purpose: We report the results of a study designed to assess whether and how much potential individual end users are willing to pay for Quality of Life Technologies (QoLTs) designed to enhance functioning and independence.

Design And Methods: We carried out a web survey of a nationally representative sample of U.S.

Older adults' and case managers' initial impressions of community-based telehealth kiosks.

Community-based (multi-user) telehealth interventions may be beneficial for older adults, but there is little research regarding such interventions. As a first step in feasibility assessment, we used a qualitative descriptive approach to examine the acceptability and perceived value of community-based telehealth kiosks with regard to current health self-management practices of community-dwelling older adults. Participants included residents (n = 6) and community agency case managers (n = 3) of a U.

Ethical perspectives on emerging assistive technologies: insights from focus groups with stakeholders in long-term care facilities.

ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGIES ARE RELATIVELY novel tools for research and daily care in long-term care (LTC) facilities that are faced with the burgeoning of the older adult population and dwindling staffing resources. The degree to which stakeholders in LTC facilities are receptive to the use of these technologies is poorly understood. Eighteen semi-structured focus groups and one interview were conducted with relevant groups of stakeholders at seven LTC facilities in southwestern Pennsylvania.