Distant Communication between Patients and Family

Chihpin Hsiao, Mendie Hu, Takahiro Ito, Thomas Roh

Problem Statement

- Family away from patient rooms- Supporting emotional needs

Two General Solutions

Direct communication    Actively sent, response expected    Synchronous vs. asynchronous

Ambient devices    Non-disruptive, usually real-time, no need to respond

Solution: Interface for PatientAmbient Devices:• visual: Changing colors or postures of flower pot, Clock, Portrait or

even the lighting condition in ICU room etc.• sounds: Ambient music and ambient sound• haptic: changing temperature or vibration

Courtesy of Philips Ambient Experience from Digital Family Portrait

Solution: Interface for Patient

Direct Communication Devices:• Express explicitly• Present the info sent by family: messages(text, audio, video), status

updates• Present the info collected from family: location data, movement (measured

by accelerometers)

Solution: Interface for Family

• Family can receive information about patient while away

• Messages (audio, text, or video) can be sent to the patient

• Family can view patient's statuso Patient pushes button that relays "I miss you",

"I need you here", etc.o Patient pushes button to show they read a

message• Avoid whole report

o Family doesn't need to constantly monitoro Physicians should contact family members

about patient (different problem)

ReferencePhilips Ambient Experience http://www.healthcare.philips.com/main/products/ambient_experience/index.wpd

Asynchronous health care communicationE. Vance Wilson, June 2003. Communications of the ACM , Volume 46 Issue 6

Let's stay in touch: sharing photos for restoring social connectedness between rehabilitants, friends and familyMargit Biemans, Betsy van Dijk, Pavan Dadlani, Aart van Halteren, October 2009. Assets '09: Proceedings of the 11th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility

Developing a media space for remote synchronous parent-child interactionSvetlana Yarosh, Stephen Cuzzort, Hendrik Müller, Gregory D. Abowd, June 2009. IDC '09: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children

Digital family portraits: supporting peace of mind for extended family membersMynatt et al. Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems (2001) 333-340