Human Factors and Requirements of People with Mild Cognitive Impairment, their Caregivers and Healthcare Professionals for eHealth Systems with Wearable Trackers

With the onset of dementia primarily, but not exclusively, on elders and the lack of pharmaceutical treatment, lifestyle monitoring through technology seems to be a prominent solution. The human effort, error and cost imposed by close monitoring can be largely mitigated by promising eHealth technological solutions. Wearable, wristband or wristwatch, trackers are flooding the retail market at affordable prices. However, their acceptability and effectiveness for clinical purposes and especially the growing elderly population and their caregivers are still being investigated. This explorative study aims to answer such questions after carefully designing a questionnaire tailored to 45 end-users distributed in three groups of 15 participants each: healthcare professionals (HCP), caregivers and people with Mild Cognitive impairment (MCI) related to AD. Findings include that HCP, caregivers and MCI participants are willing to adopt eHealth solutions based on wearables in order to assist in daily care through holistic and objective monitoring as well as the difficulties, peculiarities and priorities they are aspiring to alleviate through such systems.