BACKGROUND: The ambient assisted living (AAL) market is rapidly becoming fundamental to the delivery of health and social care services for the elderly. Worldwide many different steps have been taken to increase the engagement of older adults with these technologies. Much of this work has focused on the development of novel digital services that increase wellbeing or tackle social challenges. AIM: The aim of the study was to identify and describe the demands for AAL-services from the perspective of older adults. We also examine the challenges and needs of the ambient assisted living market using a needs based approach. METHOD: An exploratory case study was conducted with an aim to capture information about older adults' demands for AAL services. A survey was used to collect the data. The survey study respondents validated the results. RESULTS: The results of the study indicate that the area of AAL needs be studied from a multiple-sided market perspective. Our research suggests there is a need to describe and understand the factors that facilitate or constrain the implementation of services with focus on health and social care. There is also a need to describe and analyze the relationship between policy and practice and its effects on the AAL market. It is necessary to capture expressed demand, to identify market challenges at the macro level and to be able to understand how services should operate and serve older adults in practice. Such research is critical to the development of guidance for policy makers, suppliers and service providers. DISCUSSION: Older adults are asking for intelligent, assistive living solutions that help them to continue to live independent lives and remain socially included in their networks, associations, and communities. The elderly need services that stimulate and maintain their physical and intellectual capital. The development of innovative AAL environments is, however, a complex social process that involves the use and delivery of innovative ICT-based services. The implementation and use of AAL to support older adults involve service providers and elderly consumers. CONCLUSIONS: The results of the study may be of interest to policy makers, entrepreneurs, technology suppliers, service providers and health and social care organizations, who are willing to innovate and influence the development of the AAL market through their choices and decisions. IMIA and Thieme. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. 

OBJECTIVES: This paper describes a methodology for gathering requirements and early design of remote monitoring technology (RMT) for enhancing patient safety during pandemics using virtual care technologies. As pandemics such as COrona VIrus Disease (COVID-19) progress there is an increasing need for effective virtual care and RMT to support patient care while they are at home. METHODS: The authors describe their work in conducting literature reviews by searching PubMed.gov and the grey literature for articles, and government websites with guidelines describing the signs and symptoms of COVID-19, as well as the progression of the disease. The reviews focused on identifying gaps where RMT could be applied in novel ways and formed the basis for the subsequent modelling of use cases for applying RMT described in this paper. RESULTS: The work was conducted in the context of a new Home of the Future laboratory which has been set up at the University of Victoria. The literature review led to the development of a number of object-oriented models for deploying RMT. This modeling is being used for a number of purposes, including for education of students in health infomatics as well as testing of new use cases for RMT with industrial collaborators and projects within the smart home of the future laboratory. CONCLUSIONS: Object-oriented modeling, based on analysis of gaps in the literature, was found to be a useful approach for describing, communicating and teaching about potential new uses of RMT. IMIA and Thieme. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. 

In this study, we explore how healthcare professionals in primary care and outpatient clinics perceive the outcomes of giving patients online access to their electronic health records. The study was carried out as a case study and included a workshop, six interviews and a survey that was answered by 146 healthcare professionals. The results indicate that professionals working in primary care perceive that an increase in information-sharing with patients can increase adherence, clarify important information to the patient and allow the patient to quality-control documented information. Professionals at outpatient clinics seem less convinced about the benefits of patient accessible electronic health records and have concerns about how patients manage the information that they are given access to. However, the patient accessible electronic health record has not led to a change in documentation procedures among the majority of the professionals. While the findings can be connected to the context of outpatient clinics and primary care units, other contextual factors might influence the results and more in-depth studies are therefore needed to clarify the concerns.

Information technology can be an important facilitator of social inclusion for people with disabilities into society. However, the goals specified in this area by organizations such as the European Commission have not yet been achieved in their totality. The aim of this paper is to explore which types of information communication technology-based applications and/or digital services have been suggested to facilitate the social integration of people who suffer from different types of disabilities. We performed a literature review that included studies published during a period of 6 years (2010-2016). The results show that, in the data we have had access to, no concrete patterns can be identified regarding the type of technology or technological trends that can be used to support the social integration of individuals with disabilities. This literature review is of relevance to the identification of further research areas and to the identification of issues which have to be considered in the context of the development and implementation of technological innovations that are aimed at promoting or facilitating social inclusion of individuals with disabilities.

The Nordic eHealth Research Network, a subgroup of the Nordic Council of Ministers eHealth group, is working on developing indicators to monitor progress in availability, use and outcome of eHealth applications in the Nordic countries. This paper reports on the consecutive analysis of National eHealth policies in the Nordic countries from 2012 to 2016. Furthermore, it discusses the consequences for the development of indicators that can measure changes in the eHealth environment arising from the policies. The main change in policies is reflected in a shift towards more stakeholder involvement and intensified focus on clinical infrastructure. This change suggests developing indicators that can monitor understandability and usability of eHealth systems, and the use and utility of shared information infrastructure from the perspective of the end-users - citizens/patients and clinicians in particular.

Innovation in healthcare can be associated with social innovation and the mission to contribute to a shared value that benefits not only individuals or organizations but the society as a whole. In this paper, we present the prerequisites of stimulating a market for social innovations by studying the introduction of a national health account. The results show that there is a need to clarify if a national health account should be viewed as a public good or not, to clarify the financial responsibilities of different actors, to establish clear guidelines and to develop regulations concerning price, quality and certification of actors. The ambition to stimulate the market through a national health account is a promising start. However, the challenges have to be confronted in order for public and private actors to collaborate and build a market for social innovations such as a national health account.

To analyse the impact of implementation and use of eHealth services is fraught with difficulty, and there is often a gap between expected and identified outcomes. In this paper, we identify innovation effects of an eHealth service by applying a framework that focusses on the expected coherent impacts of implementing an IT innovation and contributes to the body of knowledge on tracking innovation effects of services in eHealth. A case study examines four different care units in a government-funded health-care setting. The results show that the effects in the first two contexts of the framework, the micro level and intra-/interorganisational level, could be clearly identified with regard to the physicians and the organisation. However, effects were lacking in the virtual context when looking beyond the involvement of the stakeholders in the eHealth service. The connections between effects for societal groups and larger societal systems simply could not be made in a satisfactory manner.

In recent years, the use of terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) technique in engineering surveys is gaining an increasing interest due to the advantages of non-contact, rapidity, high accuracy, and large scale. Millions of accurate 3D points (mm level accuracy) can be delivered by this technique with a high point density in a short time (up to 1 million points per second), which makes it a potential technique for large scale applications in engineering environments such as tunnels, bridges, and heritage buildings. Tunnels, in particular those with long lengths, create great challenges for surveyors to obtain the satisfactory scanned data. This paper presents a short history of TLS techniques used for tunnels. A general overview of TLS techniques is given, followed by a review of several applications of TLS for tunnels. These applications are classified as: detecting geological features of drilling tunnels, monitoring the geometry of tunnels during excavation, making deformation measurements, and extracting features. The review emphasizes how TLS techniques can be used to measure various aspects of tunnels. It is clear that TLS techniques are not yet a common tool for tunnel investigations, but there is still a huge potential to excavate.

Objectives: To discuss how current research in the area of smart homes and ambient assisted living will be influenced by the use of big data. Methods: A scoping review of literature published in scientific journals and conference proceedings was performed, focusing on smart homes, ambient assisted living and big data over the years 2011-2014. Results: The health and social care market has lagged behind other markets when it comes to the introduction of innovative IT solutions and the market faces a number of challenges as the use of big data will increase. First, there is a need for a sustainable and trustful information chain where the needed information can be transferred from all producers to all consumers in a structured way. Second, there is a need for big data strategies and policies to manage the new situation where information is handled and transferred independently of the place of the expertise. Finally, there is a possibility to develop new and innovative business models for a market that supports cloud computing, social media, crowdsourcing etc. Conclusions: The interdisciplinary area of big data, smart homes and ambient assisted living is no longer only of interest for IT developers, it is also of interest for decision makersas customers make more informed choices among today’s services. In the future it will be of importance to make information usable for managers and improve decision making, tailor smart home services based on big data, develop new business models, increase competition and identify policies to ensure privacy, security and liability.

Recognizing that current practices for healthcare delivery are no longer sustainable, OECD governments are focusing more and more on how to leverage ICT to facilitate superior healthcare delivery. One such possibility is the use of Telemedicine. A major goal of telemedicine today is to develop next-generation telemedicine tools and technologies. However, key andquot;classicandquot; barriers continue to challenge widespread telemedicine adoption by health care organizations. These barriers include technology, financial, legal/standards, business strategy, and human resources issues. This comparative study explores the current status of barriers and opportunities to the widespread adoption of telemedicine in two different countries: Sweden, and USA.