Towards acceptable emerging technologies for homemonitoring and care: a feasibility study with COVID-19 patients

Abstract

Healthcare continuity and remote care are among the key components for tackling disease-related effects using technological solutions. People recovering from home need high-quality of care and timely monitoring, resembling hospital care. This study proposes the use of a new device for person - machine interaction for home monitoring. The system takes advantage of automatic interaction initiated by the device on detecting patients' symptoms and providing remote care in order to improve technology engagement features. The feasibility of the proposed system was tested in COVID-19 patients as a definitive case of stay-at-home care where the treatment depends on the current state of health and the severity of the symptoms. The study shows promising results in terms of usability. The vast majority of the answers are perceiving the system as useful (90.9%) and easy to use (95.5%) and the overall System Usability Score (SUS) of the system is 65.25. The system usage adherence was also promising for the quarantine period (on average 7.2 days) but dropped after that. However, the results from the clinical team interviews showed that there is a need for sufficient allocated time for clinicians to get acquainted with the system and for ED staff to explain the device to patients.