Browsing by Author "Isomursu, Minna"
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Item Expectations and user experience of a multimodal medicine management system for older users(2014-06) Harjumaa, Marja; Idigoras, Igone; Isomursu, Minna; Garzo, Ainara; Medical TechnologiesPurpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyse the adoption of a multimodal medication management system (MMS) targeted on older people and home care professionals. The paper aims to describe the expectations of the system and the user experience findings from an empirical qualitative field trial. The field trial results are used to discuss how MMSs should be designed in order to improve adherence to medications. Design/methodology/approach: The paper suggests that building a multimodal medicine management system targeted on both older users and home care professionals brings many benefits over electronic medicine dispenser systems or general reminder systems. The research process uses an iterative prototyping approach including phases of requirements analysis and concept design, prototype building and evaluation in a field trial. Findings: The study demonstrates how a system that merely satisfied users during the prototype building phase does not necessarily succeed as well as expected in the field trials. It would be important to consider reasons for medication non-adherence and non-technology factors influencing willingness to adopt new assistive devices in order to promote diffusion of new MMSs at home. The paper also discusses how the different persuasive functionalities of the system addressed patient-centred factors influencing non-adherence and how they could be addressed. Research limitations/implications: This study has some limitations. The actual adherence to medications was not measured. However, in the future, it will be important to study how the MMSs influence medication adherence. Also, the user experiences of the home care professionals were not studied in the field trials. Home care professionals who were involved in the user studies and trials merely estimated the value for their patients and not for themselves. Originality/value: This paper analyses design issues relevant when designing systems to help older people manage their medications.Item Touch- and audio-based medication management service concept for vision impaired older people(2011) Ervasti, Mari; Isomursu, Minna; Idigoras Leibar, Igone; Medical TechnologiesA novel Near Field Communication (NFC) based solution to support medication management of vision impaired older users is presented in this paper. The service concept allows older users with vision impairments to manage their daily medications autonomously by providing them means to identify medicines and retrieve personal medication information. In order to demonstrate the feasibility of the concept, an early prototype called BlindNFC was implemented. It is a NFC-enabled PDA with a basic functionality of reading the medicine name and dosage information aloud by touching the medicine package. The service concept was tested and evaluated with user studies in Finland and Spain, where altogether 39 older people with varying level of problems with their sight and other functional abilities participated in the studies. Findings revealed that older users learned and used the basic functionality of touch- and audio-based system quite easily. A set of design issues to be taken into account was identified. Users showed a high degree of satisfaction in the use of the BlindNFC device, together with the solution it offers. They found potential value in the technology also in tagging and identifying other everyday physical objects than medicine packages and using their own self-recorded audio messages for marking objects. However, users were not currently willing to adopt the system for continuous use, as many of them had established over time methods for managing the medications, and were therefore observed reluctant to change these ways.