Applications in Health and Wellness
Screen-Time: Health, Achievement and Sleep
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Erhan Sinay, Thomas G Ryan
Herein we suggest a person today will be confronted with multiple blue light emitting screens daily. Exposure and time attending to these screens is a concern, issue and focus of much research locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. Our purpose was to develop an integrative and reflexive understanding of screen time as it impacts people of all ages both physically and mentally. In doing so we illuminated several problematic areas of concern for children, youth and adults thereby ascertaining whether screen time was positive or a negative phenomenon. Some research suggests many negative outcomes for those with high rates of screen time and other investigators point towards positive impacts of screen time. Perhaps, if Health is a priority, screen time is not an issue, if the person remains healthy.
Exploring Chatbots for Clinical Trials
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ching Hua Chuan
We propose a chatbot to assist cancer patients and their families with clinical trials information online. Clinical trials are important tools to improve knowledge about effective treatments for all diseases, including cancers. However, studies show that fewer than 5% of cancer patients are enrolled in any type of research study or clinical trial. Although there are a wide variety of reasons for the low participation rate, we address this issue by focusing on the difficulty of information acquisition and comprehension of clinical trial documents due to medical jargon and technical details. To reduce such difficulty, a chatbot was developed to answer questions and provide proactive assistance in a conversational manner. The chatbot is designed to help users determine whether they are eligible for the clinical trial and to identify what additional information that they need to consult with their doctors about in order to determine their eligibility. An in-person experiment was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the chatbot. First, information about a specific clinical trial on melanoma cancer was obtained from the National Cancer Institute. Three interfaces were developed: a traditional website mimicking NCI’s search page, a website containing the clinical trial information with a chatbot assistant in the sidebar, and a chatbot-only interface with information delivered only through the chatbot. The preliminary results indicate that the participants who used chatbots achieved better understanding about eligibility than those who used only the website. Additionally, interfaces with chatbots were rated significantly better in terms of perceived usability, interactivity, and dialogue.
Cognition, Culture, Context, and Conveying Care: A Cognitive Theory Approach to Designing Usable Health and Medical Technologies
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kirk St.Amant, Nicholas Bustamante
Meeting the design and usability needs of other cultures requires an understanding of the contexts where materials are used (Norman, 2002; Garrett, 2010). From a healthcare perspective, this requires an understanding of the contexts in which patients use medical technologies and materials (Meloncon, 2015; St.Amant, 2015). The challenge involves identifying variables affecting how such materials are used in different settings to help guide the design processes used to develop different health and medical technologies. A modified version of the cognitive science concepts of scripts and prototypes can help to address such situations. This proposed presentation would examine how cognitive concepts of scripts and prototypes can guide the process of developing usable health and medical technologies for different cultural audiences. In so doing, the presenters would: Overview what scripts and prototypes are and how they can help individuals understand contexts where health and medical materials are used; Explain how scripts and prototypes can guide the design of materials to enhance use by different audiences; Discuss how the application of these ideas can assist with the translation and localization of health and medical materials for patients from other cultures. Through this approach, attendees with gain a familiarity with scripts and prototypes and learn how to use them to understand and address the contexts in which patients use health and medical technologies.
