A Digital Platform for Facilitating Personalized Dementia Care in Nursing Homes: Formative Evaluation Study

Area of Science:

• Gerontology
• Health Informatics
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Personalized care is crucial for people with dementia, aligning with person-centered care principles.
• The Internet of Things (IoT) enables reliable data collection for enhanced dementia care personalization.
• Low user acceptance of assistive technologies in nursing homes necessitates improved design approaches.

Purpose of the Study:

• Evaluate a digital platform for personalizing dementia care in a real-world nursing home setting.
• Assess the platform's ability to generate insights into individual dementia patient states.
• Gather feedback from care teams on the platform's usability and effectiveness.

Main Methods:

• A digital platform was deployed in a nursing home for 7 weeks.
• Collected data were visualized and presented to the care team.
• Researchers analyzed visualizations for patterns, and care teams were interviewed about insights, actions, usefulness, and desired improvements.

Main Results:

• The digital platform showed potential for pattern detection in dementia care data.
• Care teams generated insights at client, ward, and team levels, leading to investigation and implementation actions.
• Varied user acceptance was observed, with three key areas for platform improvement identified.

Conclusions:

• The study provided insights into data-enabled design for personalized dementia care.
• Findings offer recommendations for integrating assistive technologies within nursing home environments.
• The digital platform demonstrated utility in managing behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia.