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      Usability Study of a Wireless Monitoring System among Alzheimer's Disease Elderly Population

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          Abstract

          Healthcare technologies are slowly entering into our daily lives, replacing old devices and techniques with newer intelligent ones. Although they are meant to help people, the reaction and willingness to use such new devices by the people can be unexpected, especially among the elderly. We conducted a usability study of a fall monitoring system in a long-term nursing home. The subjects were the elderly with advanced Alzheimer's disease. The study presented here highlights some of the challenges faced in the use of wearable devices and the lessons learned. The results gave us useful insights, leading to ergonomics and aesthetics modifications to our wearable systems that significantly improved their usability and acceptance. New evaluating metrics were designed for the performance evaluation of usability and acceptability.

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          Most cited references15

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          Balance, executive functions and falls in elderly with Alzheimer's disease (AD): a longitudinal study.

          Elderly individuals with AD are more susceptible to falls, which might be associated with decrements in their executive functions and balance, among other things. We aimed to analyze the effects of a program of dual task physical activity on falls, executive functions and balance of elderly individuals with AD. We studied 21 elderly with probable AD, allocated to two groups: the training group (TG), with 10 elderly who participated in a program of dual task physical activity; and the control group (CG), with 11 elderly who were not engaged in regular practice of physical activity. The Clock Drawing Test (CDT) and the Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB) were used in the assessment of the executive functions, while the Berg Balance Scale (BBS) and the Timed Up-and-Go (TUG)-test evaluated balance. The number of falls was obtained by means of a questionnaire. We observed a better performance of the TG as regards balance and executive functions. Moreover, the lower the number of steps in the TUG scale, the higher the scores in the CDT, and in the FAB. The practice of regular physical activity with dual task seems to have contributed to the maintenance and improvement of the motor and cognitive functions of the elderly with AD. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
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            SATIRE: A Software Architecture for Smart AtTIRE

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              Satire: A Software Architecture for Smart Attire

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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Int J Telemed Appl
                Int J Telemed Appl
                IJTA
                International Journal of Telemedicine and Applications
                Hindawi Publishing Corporation
                1687-6415
                1687-6423
                2014
                20 May 2014
                : 2014
                : 617495
                Affiliations
                1Institute of Informatics and Telematics, National Research Council, Via G. Moruzzi 1, 56124 Pisa, Italy
                2Department of Information Engineering, University of Pisa, L. Lazzarino 1, 56122 Pisa, Italy
                3Department of Computer Science & Applied Statistics, University of New Brunswick, Saint John, NB, Canada E2L 4L5
                Author notes

                Academic Editor: Fei Hu

                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4057-2084
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0374-9864
                Article
                10.1155/2014/617495
                4055351
                24963289
                bd4c211c-6520-4c8f-890b-8977a7081eeb
                Copyright © 2014 Stefano Abbate et al.

                This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

                History
                : 22 October 2013
                : 19 February 2014
                Funding
                Funded by: Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca
                Categories
                Research Article

                Medicine
                Medicine

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