The life expectancy is remarkably increasing worldwide through the raising awareness about nutrition, health and education among the population. This leads to the population getting older and older. Therefore, the need for medical care becomes a challenge for current health care delivery models. As older adults have the desire to stay as long as possible in their own residence, special home healthcare is needed. Nevertheless, this would be very expensive without the help of technological systems. Therefore, it is required that further technologies for home healthcare are developed and implemented. This would further lead to cost reductions as a patient does not need an expensive and limited hospital stay or nursing home. In addition, older people can live at home as long as their disease allows them to take care of themselves. The adaptable home healthcare system T-Care has been developed, where human computer interaction should lead to increased acceptance of this type of technology for older adults. Three healthcare professionals tested T-Care. All of the testers were able to adapt the prototype to the needs of the patients in their scenarios. Furthermore, the results of the conducted usability questionnaires at the end showed that a Tangible User Interface can meet the adaption requirements of home healthcare systems.

Hannah Fehringer

o.Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Christian Stary, opens an external URL in a new window