title: Would mobile health be a solution to rehospitalization?
abstract: It has been well-established that social environmental factors can increase the risk of rehospitalization for people receiving home healthcare services. For caregivers who might be challenged to keep up with sometimes unfamiliar health monitoring tasks or to know when to seek help, mobile health technology offers the potential to enhance the skills of informal caregivers and to improve the communication between home and clinical care. This paper described our recent work to determine the usability, functionality, and style of interaction that would be needed to provide an effective and well-accepted tool. Caregivers would likely adopt new mobile health tools, as long as care is taken to eliminate potential barriers, for example, by providing adequate training, and to include design aspects that enhance one's motivation to use a tool, such as by supporting autonomy and engagement.
authors.affiliation: Florida Hospital Clinical Excellence and Nursing Research, Orlando, Florida, USA.
authors.forename: Hong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Tao
authors.affiliation: College of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.
authors.forename: Susan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: McRoy
authors.affiliation: School of Nursing, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.
authors.forename: Lin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D006699:Home Care Services / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D063731:Mobile Applications / Q000639:trends; D005791:Patient Care / Q000379:methods; D010359:Patient Readmission; D017216:Telemedicine / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards
keywords: family caregiver; health apps; informal caregiver; mobile health; readmission; rehospitalization