Contributing to Healthcare: Monitoring the Well-being of Senior Adults in Data-based Healthcare

Abstract

Every country experiences an aging population, which challenges its health care system. Many medical reports show that promotion of healthy aging is the key way to release pressure on healthcare systems. Keeping track of seniors’ well-being and encouraging them to care about their preventative healthcare is especially crucial. When design interfaces with the medical domain, how can design help? According to the Canadian Medical Association, doctors encourage seamless data record systems in the future of healthcare. In the 2019 Health 2.0 conference, experts divided data-based health systems into three overlapping domains: personal, clinical and public. In terms of the domain of personal health data, seniors wear smart devices to monitor their health data. For the clinical domain, data are uploaded to online cloud services and Electronic Health Records (EHRs) in clinics or family doctors’ offices. For the domain of the public, some stakeholders or governments can access EHRs to make healthcare policies for large-scale populations. However, there are some issues: privacy concerns, unpersonalized health plans and uncoordinated communications. Faced with these challenges, a health bracelet and a matching connector are designed with five features: setting up individual databases, creating personalized health plans, giving consent to doctors to access users’ health data, connecting and sharing data with families, and promoting physical activity. Through the design process as its research methodology, this research demonstrates how design can help promote healthy aging and optimize a seamless data-based healthcare system for seniors.