An evaluation of wellness assessment visualizations for older adults.
BACKGROUND
Smart home technologies provide a valuable resource to unobtrusively monitor health and wellness within an older adult population. However, the breadth and density of data available along with aging associated decreases in working memory, prospective memory, spatial cognition, and processing speed can make it challenging to comprehend for older adults. We developed visualizations of smart home health data integrated into a framework of wellness. We evaluated the visualizations through focus groups with older adults and identified recommendations to guide the future development of visualizations.


METHODS
We conducted four focus groups with older adult participants (n=31) at an independent retirement community. Participants were presented with three different visualizations from a wellness pilot study. A qualitative descriptive analysis was conducted to identify thematic content.


RESULTS
We identified three themes related to processing and application of visualizations: (1) values of visualizations for wellness assessment, (2) cognitive processing approaches to visualizations, and (3) integration of health data for visualization. In addition, the focus groups highlighted key design considerations of visualizations important towards supporting decision-making and evaluation assessments within integrated health displays.


CONCLUSIONS
Participants found inherent value in having visualizations available to proactively engage with their healthcare provider. Integrating the visualizations into a wellness framework helped reduce the complexity of raw smart home data. There has been limited work on health visualizations from a consumer perspective, in particular for an older adult population. Creating appropriately designed visualizations is valuable towards promoting consumer involvement within the shared decision-making process of care.
1 Department of Biomedical Informatics and Medical Education, School of Medicine, University of Washington , Seattle, Washington.
Thai
T
Le
Blaine
B
Reeder
Daisy
D
Yoo
Rafae
R
Aziz
Hilaire J
HJ
Thompson
George
G
Demiris
D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging; D003071:Cognition; D003657:Decision Making; D003661:Decision Support Techniques; D005260:Female; D017144:Focus Groups; D015577:Geriatric Assessment / Q000379:methods; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008603:Mental Health; D008875:Middle Aged; D036301:Qualitative Research; D013686:Telemetry / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D014584:User-Computer Interface
aged; consumer health information; data display; holistic health