scholarly journals Acceptance and Influencing Factors of Social Virtual Reality in the Urban Elderly

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (22) ◽  
pp. 9345 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Shao ◽  
I-Jui Lee

In the stage of aging society and population aging, the social needs of the elderly are widely discussed by researchers. Especially driven by the demand of tele-medical treatment and tele-rehabilitation therapy, it is vital for the elderly to integrate into virtual communities by combining social virtual reality (VR) with different medical services and entertainment needs. In addition, affected by the COVID-19 epidemic, it is more difficult for people to have face-to-face contacts. With more remote consultation, entertainment and virtual social connectivity, the application of social VR is more urgent and valuable. However, there is little discussion on the acceptability and influencing factors of social VR among the elderly at present. Therefore, in order to get further data, we used (1) early stage semi-structured interviews and then (2) Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) questionnaires for investigation. One hundred fourteen elderly people aged 60–89 living in the metropolitan area of Taipei were taken as the subjects. To help them understand the situation and state of using social VR, these elderly people were asked to use a head-mounted display (HMD) to experience social VR games. The preliminary results showed that the elderly had obvious preference for entertainment (32.4%) and medical treatment (31.3%). The interview showed that this was related to the physiological condition or medical needs of the age range. In order to further understand how social VR would affect the social life of the elderly, we proposed the further demand structure of UTAUT Model based on the interview of both experts and the elderly. The model structures include (1) Performance Expectancy, (2) Perceived Enjoyment, (3) Social Influence, (4) User Attitude, (5) Behavioral Intention, and so on. These structures were applied to conduct interviews and questionnaires to find out the influence extent and relevance of the elderly on different structural needs, and suggestions were given accordingly. The results of the above interviews showed that (1) the elderly thought that the functions of entertaining and interacting of social VR could increase their social opportunities, and also meet medical needs (teleconference, cognitive decline, etc.), (2) the closeness of social relations (between family members, friends, doctors, and places), and also affect the relevance of Perceived Enjoyment (β = 0.77, p = 0.000 < 0.05). The results of these phenomena and interviews showed the interplay between the demand structures and their special relevance. They also indicated that as to social VR technologies, various demands and functional issues of the elderly need to be considered, and these demands would appear in the subtle usage, and different social VR interfaces and functions would emerge based on their special living ways and physical and psychological demands.

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (17) ◽  
pp. 4792 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tsao ◽  
Shu ◽  
Lan

Through virtual interaction and multivariate communication, the social interaction and life satisfaction of elderly people can be improved. This study integrated virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) to construct a visualized reminiscence therapy system, which provides not only reminiscence entertainment but may also aid in dementia prevention for healthy and sub-healthy (a therapeutic working concept which defines an intermediate stage between health and disease) elderly people. Images taken by an LG 360 CAM are primarily introduced into Power Director 360 as the guide interface. The special effects are joined using After Effects. With the model constructed under 3ds Max, the reminiscence therapy system integrated by virtual reality and augmented reality is then established by the Unity engine. It is shown that the developed 3D ancient building model can be used by Samsung Note 5 smartphones as well as VR CASE glasses to increase the immersive experience for the elderly. Through nostalgic elements triggered by the AR/VR three-dimensional model and video/audio interaction, the feasibility of our integrated system for reminiscence therapy is thus verified. Through reminiscence therapy, memories and thoughts can fully be activated as a therapy for elderly people. The visualized reality system developed in this study can further promote the social interactional satisfaction of elderly people.


Author(s):  
Malek Alaoui ◽  
Myriam Lewkowicz

Encouraging elderly people to stay at home as long as possible is associated with a higher risk of social isolation. Nowadays, aging well at home cannot be reduced to the management of physical and cognitive frailties and technologies should also tackle the quality of life of the elderly by fostering their social interactions. However, designing appropriate services and ensuring their adoption remain open questions, to which we try to provide answers at the methodological and instrumental levels. The authors present here a Living Lab approach to design communication services for elderly people at home. They illustrate this approach by describing their participation in a European project aiming at developing and evaluating Social TV services and they conclude with recommendations for the successful socio-technical design of services that foster the social engagement of elderly people.


Author(s):  
Atef ATA ◽  
N. M. Fonseca Ferreira

Over the engineering history, environmental and social needs inspire the development and innovation of many wonderful applications. For example, when the industrial robots entered our industrial life, great advances especially in automotive industry where the industrial robots cover about 90 % of the car industry activities started to change our own life. As the number of elderly people is increasing rapidly all over the world, this requires us to focus on their needs as their children left them alone in our busy daily life. Mechatronics and robotics can offer many possibilities to help elderly people by providing smart solutions for their daily needs as well as entertaining them during their lonely long stay at their homes. Many companies are providing smart mobile robots in different platforms (wheeled or walking) to help the elderly people depend on themselves in receiving their food and medicine at prescheduled times. Other companies are interested in providing smart wheel chairs to help the elderly people navigate indoor and outdoor freely and conveniently without any external help. Meanwhile, some companies are providing entertainment robots in different shapes to talk, play and communicate with elderly people in a nice way. The objective of this paper is to explore the mechatronics and robotics capabilities to assist elderly people and to make their life easier, comfortable and self-governing without any external help. This paper will highlight also the effect of the environment and the social needs in inspiring new innovations. As an example, the innovations by Badi Az-Zaman Ismail Al-Jazari, a Muslim scientist, will be investigated. This paper is going to discuss also the idea and the motivation behind two of Al-Jazari’s robotic applications (Although the term robot was not coined at that time). These two devices are the washing hands and the peacock fountain. Although he used to apply mechanical structure and fluid for controlling the motion of the two devices, they were very beautiful and resemble some of the robotic applications nowadays.   


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaozhen Lai ◽  
Hongguo Rong ◽  
Xiaochen Ma ◽  
Zhiyuan Hou ◽  
Shunping Li ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: The disease burden of seasonal influenza is substantial in China, while there is still a lack of nation-wide economic burden estimates. This study aims to examine influenza-like illness (ILI) prevalence, healthcare seeking behaviors, economic impact of ILI and its influencing factors among children, chronic disease patients and the elderly during the 2018–19 influenza season.Methods: From August to October 2019, 6668 children’s caregivers, 1735 chronic disease patients, and 3849 elderly people were recruited from ten provinces in China to participate in an on-site survey. The economic burden of ILI consisted of direct (medical or non-medical) and indirect burden, and multivariate linear regression was adopted to predict the influencing factors of total economic burden.Results: There were 45.73% children, 16.77% chronic disease patients and 12.70% elderly people reporting ILI, and most participants chose “Outpatient service only”, “Over-the-counter (OTC) medication only” or “Outpatient + OTC” after ILI. The average total economic burden of ILI was 1848 yuan (USD266.1) for children, 1105 yuan (USD159.1) for chronic disease patients and 2064 yuan (USD297.2) for the elderly. Multivariate linear regression showed that boys, the only child in family, and urban adult residents tended to have larger economic burden after ILI.Conclusions: Large economic burden of ILI was highlighted, especially among the elderly with less income and larger medical burden, as well as children with higher prevalence and higher self-payment ratio. It is important to adopt targeted interventions for high-risk groups, and this study can help national-level decision-making on the introduction of influenza vaccination as public health project.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marjan Cugmas ◽  
Anuška Ferligoj ◽  
Tina Kogovšek ◽  
Zenel Batagelj

Population ageing requires society to adjust by ensuring additional types of services and assistance for elderly people. These may be provided by either organized services and sources of informal social support. The latter is especially important since a lack of social support is associated with a lower level of psychological and physical well-being. During the Covid-19 pandemic, social support for the elderly has proven to be even more crucial, also due to physical distancing. Therefore, this study aims to identify and describe the various types of personal social support networks of the elderly population during the coronavirus pandemic. To this end, a survey of Slovenians older than 64 years was conducted from April 25 to May 4, 2020 on a probability Web-panel-based sample (n = 605). The ego-networks were clustered by a hierarchical clustering approach for symbolic data. Clustering was performed for different types of social support (socializing, instrumental support, emotional support) and different characteristics of the social support networks (i.e., type of relationship, number of contacts, geographical distance). The results show that most of the elderly population in Slovenia have a satisfactory social support network, while the share of those without any (accessible) source of social support is significant. The results are particularly valuable for sustainable care policy planning, crisis intervention planning as well as any future waves of the coronavirus.


2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 203-212
Author(s):  
Gusti Sumarsih ◽  
Fitra Yeni ◽  
Arif Rohman Mansur ◽  
Siti Annisa Irdhani

Physical health problems that often occur in the elderly people, for instance falling down to floor. The physiological changing during the aging process increase the client's risk of falling and having an accident. Most falls occur when moving from a bed, stool, and toilet, when going into or out of the bathroom, tripping over the edge of a carpet or door, slipping on wet surfaces and going downstairs. There are many factors that play a role in the occurrence of falls in the elderly, both intrinsic and extrinsic factors. The problems faced by the partners at this time include, there are 20 elderly people at the Social Home of Tresna Werdha Sabai Nan Aluih Sicincin, experiencing rheumatism, 10 seniors have experienced falls in the last 6 months, 35 elderly people experience urinary incontinence, the elderly do not know to minimize the risk of falling balance in the elderly has not been carried out and has not become a priority at the Social Home. Nursing staff identified cooperative elderly people to be provided with balance training with the application of Yoga. Activities were carried out in accordance with elderly guest houses to implement physical distancing due to pandemic Covid-19. Beside that, we provided leaflets of the Yoga’s training, some face masks, snack boxes, and cash for all elderly residents of the Sosial Home.


Author(s):  
Luis M. Camarinha-Matos ◽  
Filipa Ferrada

An important application context for virtual communities is elderly care. One of the key challenges facing modern societies is the increasing speed at which the population is aging. In Europe, for example, during the last three decades the number of people aged 60 years or more has risen by about 50%. Traditional approaches to care provision are based on support from either the relatives or the elderly care centers. Nevertheless, these two solutions have become increasingly insufficient due to (1) the impractical responsibility onto relatives¾given the fact that more and more family members have to work to secure steady incomes; (2) the costs of providing sufficient care centers, which leads to a relocation of the elderly people, often beyond their home communities; and (3) the fact that many elderly people preserve enough robustness to be in their homes, a situation that is often preferable to them, and as such, better for their welfare (Castolo, Ferrada, & Camarinha-Matos, 2004). This will inevitably place a considerable strain on resources and finances. To deal with this challenge, new ways of providing elderly assistance and care must be found, including the creation of a new technological infrastructure. An integrated elderly care system comprises a number of organizations, such as social security institutions, care centers/day centers, health care institutions and so forth, and involves the cooperation of a number of different human actors; for example, social care assistants, health care professionals, the elderly people and their relatives. If supported by computer networks and adequate assistance tools, such systems may evolve towards operating as a long-term virtual organization, and the various involved actors become part of a virtual community. Furthermore, virtual communities can bring the sense of community and of recognition, respect and belonging, which gives the elderly a strong feeling of usefulness along with better support for their own needs. In this context, the IST TeleCARE project (Camarinha-Matos & Afsarmanesh, 2002, 2004) was launched with the aim of designing and developing a configurable framework, based on mobile (software) agents, focused on the establishment of virtual communities for elderly support. In this article, the TeleCARE Time Bank virtual community concept is presented and the developed supporting infrastructure is discussed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 142-148
Author(s):  
K.Е. Tauenov ◽  

The article is devoted to studying the issue of social services in nursing homes as a factor of successful adaptation of elderly people in new conditions. The main legal acts in the field of protection of the rights of the elderly and disabled people are considered today. The subject of the research is the living conditions of elderly people living in nursing homes, and the impact of social services provided to them on their socio-economic and psychological adaptation. In order to improve the quality of social services in the future, to facilitate the social adaptation of the elderly, to develop proposals to Supplement the legislation on social protection of the elderly in General. Thereby increasing the ability of older people to adapt to social homes.


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