Designing Telehealth for an Aging Population: A Human Factors Perspective PDF

Preface

Telehealth pertains to the exchange of health information and delivery of health services using electronic communications to improve the health and well-being of people across the spectrum of ages, locations, and health conditions. The practice of telehealth often involves new ways for patients and health care providers to interact and communicate to achieve the same or better outcomes than with traditional face-to-face health care. Our goal for this book, therefore, is to provide a brief primer on the human factors issues that can inuence how older adults interact with telehealth systems. We also strive to follow the philosophy in this series of eschewing traditional academic writing (that cites research articles for each assertion). Instead we try to provide a distillation of our experience in this area in the form of basic observations and principles. We do provide suggested readings for those seeking to track down the research behind our recommendations.

We take inspiration from our association with the Human Factors Special Interest Group in the American Telemedicine Association, an association which has been at the forefront of promoting telemedicine in the United States and internationally. Our belief is that by paying attention to human factors principles, this new discipline can be much more successful in tting telehealth systems to the needs of older users, whether in their role as health care providers or as consumers of health care.