Tailored e-Health services for the dementia care setting: a pilot study of ‘eHealthMonitor’

There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Abstract

Background

The European eHealthMonitor project (eHM) developed a user-sensitive and interactive web portal for dementia care: the eHM Dementia Portal (eHM-DP). It aims to provide targeted and personalized support for informal caregivers of people with dementia in a home-based care setting. The objective of the pilot study was to obtain feedback on the eHM-DP from two user perspectives (caregivers and medical professionals), focusing on caregiver empowerment, decision aid, and the perceived benefits of the eHM-DP.

Methods

The study on the eHM-DP was conducted from March 2014 to June 2014. The methodological approach followed a user-participatory design with a total number of 42 participants. The study included caregivers of people with dementia and medical professionals (MPs) from the metropolitan region of Erlangen-Nürnberg (Bavaria, Germany). Study participants were interviewed face-to-face with semi-structured, written interviews.

Results

Caregivers indicated a high degree of perceived support by the eHM-DP and of provided decision aid. In total, 89 % of caregivers and 54 % of MPs would use the eHM-DP if access were provided. The primary benefits participants perceived were the acquisition of individualized information, computerized interaction between caregivers and MPs, empowerment in health-related decisions and comprehensive insights into the progress of the disease. Major recommendations for improving the eHM-DP encompassed: an active search functionality based on predefined terms, the implementation of a chatroom for caregivers, an upload function and alerts for MPs, as well as the overall design.

Conclusions

Our study is the first to have provided new insights and results on an interactive and needs-oriented web portal, endeavouring towards empowerment and assistance in decision making for caregivers as well as MPs within the realm of caring for patients with dementia. The acceptance and willingness to use the eHM-DP emphasizes the potential of eHealth services for community-based dementia care settings.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12911-015-0182-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Related collections

Most cited references 27

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: found

Is Open Access

Family caregivers of people with dementia

Henry Brodaty, Marika Donkin (2009)

Family caregivers of people with dementia, often called the invisible second patients, are critical to the quality of life of the care recipients. The effects of being a family caregiver, though sometimes positive, are generally negative, with high rates of burden and psychological morbidity as well as social isolation, physical ill-health, and financial hardship. Caregivers vulnerable to adverse effects can be identified, as can factors which ameliorate or exacerbate burden and strain. Psychosocial interventions have been demonstrated to reduce caregiver burden and depression and delay nursing home admission. Comprehensive management of the patient with dementia includes building a partnership between health professionals and family caregivers, referral to Alzheimer's Associations, and psychosocial interventions where indicated.

0 comments Cited 356 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Patient empowerment: reflections on the challenge of fostering the adoption of a new paradigm.

Robert Anderson, Martha Funnell (2005)

Diabetes is a self-managed illness in which the decisions most affecting the health and well being of patients are made by the patients themselves. Many of these decisions involve routine activities of daily living (e.g., nutrition, physical activity). Effective diabetes care requires patients and health care professionals to collaborate in the development of self-management plans that integrate the clinical expertise of health care professionals with the concerns, priorities and resources of the patient. Collaborative diabetes care requires a new "empowerment" paradigm that involves a fundamental redefinition of roles and relationships of health care professionals and patients. The challenges of fostering the adoption of a new paradigm differ substantially from those associated with the introduction of new technology. Those challenges are discussed in this paper.

0 comments Cited 133 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Why caregivers of people with dementia and memory loss don't use services.

Henry Brodaty, Cathy Thomson, Claire Thompson … (2005)

To develop a typography of the characteristics of caregivers of community dwelling people with dementia or memory loss who do not use services and empirically investigate the reasons for service non-use. The findings of a literature review were used to develop a typography of caregivers' non-use of services. This typography was applied to a sample of community-based caregivers. One in three caregivers were using no services and one in four only one service. Despite considerable proportions reporting low levels of life satisfaction and high levels of overload and resentment the main reasons caregivers gave for not using services were that they did not consider they needed the services. Other reasons for service non-use included care recipient reluctance to use services, lack of knowledge of services or being in the process of applying for services. Service availability or affordability were not identified as major impediments to service use. Presence of a physical disability and contact with a social worker were associated with service use. Caregivers of people with dementia incur significant strain and have substantial need for a variety of services. Nevertheless many caregivers were not using support services, mainly because of perceived lack of need or lack of awareness. Better public promotion of services, destigmatising dementia and encouraging referrals from health professionals could help overcome the barriers to service use. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

0 comments Cited 121 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

All references

Author and article information

Contributors

Sandra Schaller: +49-9131-8534167 , sandra.schaller@uk-erlangen.de

Velislava Marinova-Schmidt: velislava.marinova-schmidt@uk-erlangen.de

Jasmin Gobin: jasmin.gobin@uk-erlangen.de

Manfred Criegee-Rieck: Manfred.Criegee-Rieck@franziskanerbrueder.org

Lena Griebel: lena.griebel@fau.de

Sabine Engel: sabine.engel@fau.de

Veronika Stein: stein@dreycedern.de

Elmar Graessel: elmar.graessel@uk-erlangen.de

Peter L Kolominsky-Rabas: peter.kolominsky@uk-erlangen.de

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): BMC Med Inform Decis Mak

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): BMC Med Inform Decis Mak

Title: BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making

Publisher: BioMed Central (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 1472-6947

Publication date (Electronic): 28 July 2015

Publication date PMC-release: 28 July 2015

Publication date Collection: 2015

Volume: 15

Electronic Location Identifier: 58

Affiliations

[ ]Interdisciplinary Centre for Health Technology Assessment (HTA) and Public Health, Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany

[ ]Chair of Medical Informatics, Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany

[ ]Verein Dreycedern e.V., Specialist unit for informal caregivers in dementia, Erlangen, Germany

[ ]Centre for Health Services Research in Medicine, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Erlangen, Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany

Article

Publisher ID: 182

DOI: 10.1186/s12911-015-0182-2

PMC ID: 4517387

PubMed ID: 26215731

SO-VID: 35184839-51b1-4a25-80d6-f8a9142971cb

License:

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.