Focus Groups aimed at Device Development
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Focus Groups aimed at Device Development
IRAS ID
188908
Contact name
Patrick Esser
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
OXFORD BROOKES UNIVERSITY
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 0 months, 3 days
Research summary
Elderly (aged 65 through 70 years of age) are currently slow to adapt to new health technologies. Those who are engaging with new technologies tend to have a poor uptake because of 1) hardware failure, 2) the complete system not to be beneficial to them or 3) the inability to interact with the device. \n\nWith the introduction of devices becoming less obtrusive and cheaper, deployment of new measurement techniques in community settings becomes available. The latter is often referred to as telerehabilitation or ehealth. It is key to explore and understand end-user perspectives on how new technology can be adjusted to increase adoption, clinical and end-user value. This can only be achieved by establishing system requirements from an end-user perspective by exploring how this new technology could aid them and their respective clinician within their rehabilitation process. If successfully used, this could lead to personalisation of in-hospital and community rehabilitation, and therefore indirectly have a positive effect on the speed of recovery and quality of life in the frail elderly. \n\nThis project therefore aims to explore needs, barriers to new technology formulating system requirements for novel telerehabilitation & ehealth products via focus groups and thematic analysis of people aged 50-90years. Secondly we want to explore how clinicians would adopt this data coming from telehealth and ehealth applications in their day-to-day running of clinics. \n
REC name
North West - Greater Manchester South Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/NW/0963
Date of REC Opinion
8 Dec 2015
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion