Ambulatory health monitoring and remote sensing systems to be used by outpatients and elders at home: User-related design considerations

Recent developments have seen increased interest in the effect of end-user attributes on the in-practice effectiveness of systems that detect incapacitating falls and trauma at home. It is hoped that consideration and evaluation of such issues will ultimately result in long-term benefits including earlier crisis detection and response, reduced hospital admissions, and improved quality of life for relatively large groups of people. Key concerns include the needs and capabilities of end-users, the ability to nominate who is to be alerted, security, privacy, interface design and system failures. It is concluded that particularly relevant avenues for further research include end-user characteristics, interface design and peer-to-peer components.