ESTHER: a portable sensor toolkit to collect and monitor total hip replacement patient data

Abstract

Due to the increasing cost of medical care, hospitals are looking at post surgery patients' home as the primary place for recovery. Unfortunately, this paradigm shift involves difficulties for patients and physiotherapists to manage the expected outcomes. While patients face physical and emotional problems related to the new hip, clinical teams have limited resources to follow patients' health experiences during their recovery. Mobile technologies for home care provide opportunities to remotely support patients in their rehabilitation process. They are designed to become part of patients' daily activities, which requires a holistic understanding of the dynamics of post-surgery treatment. Therefore, it is foreseen that requirements to design home care technologies should address clinicians' needs related to the functional aspects as well as patients' experiences of home recovery. ESTHER (Experience Sampling for Total Hip Replacement) is a research and design toolkit developed to study Total Hip Replacement (THR) patients' experiences after surgery and to evaluate design interventions to support patients in the complexity of home recovery. The tool is based on the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) to capture patients' self report on their recovery process. In an iterative approach the tool gradually added to patients' psychological reports physical activity using wireless sensor nodes. The first three iterations of ESTHER are described to illustrate the value of situated self-reports and the richness of combining both self-report and sensing techniques as a holistic approach to understand both behavioral and experiential aspects of home recovery. The experience in conducting situated design research has shown to be valuable in understanding the technical as well as social challenges and opportunities for the research and design community of home health technologies.