Easier living: A new app could help seniors in independent living communities live a better, more independent life by enabling them to track their own health, interact with the nursing team, and improve cognitive functions.
Researchers from the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA, have developed an app designed to improve the lives of seniors residing in independent living communities. Still in the development stage, the app aims to empower seniors in the community and provide support for the nursing staff who often have many patients under their care.
There is an increasing number of tech solutions that have been developed with seniors in mind, from brain games to help improve memory to medication trackers with programmable reminders and health and fitness wearables.
In order to make this new app different, the team behind it not only brought together games and trackers in one convenient app, but also developed the app, named eSeniorCare, to be a more interactive tool for seniors than the existing app offering.
Enabling seniors to manage and improve their own health, but working as more than just a tracker, seniors can input and monitor their own medical information and set their own personal health goals.
Seniors can, for instance, set the goal of eating less junk food or cutting back on coffee, and then record their progress towards reaching these goals to send on to the care team.
The interface allows them to maintain social interactions with the team, but also increase autonomy.
The app also keeps a record of medication, with reminders of when medication is to be taken and tracking of medication history.
This information is also visible to the care team so they can quickly intervene if they see medication is being missed or taken incorrectly, but also gives the user independence to manage their own medical regime.
And unlike many existing apps which just track data, eSeniorCare also enables seniors to connect with the nursing team and caretakers by sending their concerns and questions as text or voice recordings, which in turn enables the team to monitor patients and their health concerns and reach out more easily to those who need it.
As well as its organisational features, the app also includes a variety of brain games such as crosswords and Sudoku puzzles, to help improve mental stimulation and cognitive health, a key factor in the development of dementia in seniors.
Developed by researchers from the University's Interdisciplinary Center for Network Science and Applications (iCeNSA), the team tested the app at two senior independent living facilities in South Bend, Indiana, tracking the use of the medication management component for three months and the daily activities component for seven months.
Not only did they observe an increase in seniors' comfort and ability in using the app itself, but also saw an increase in social interactions among all participants.
In the second pilot study, currently underway, researchers' initial results have revealed a high level of engagement with the brain games, with seniors reporting a sense of purpose and increase in mental stimulation.
Commenting on the app and its aims, Nitesh Chawla from the team at iCeNSA, says, "It is about personalised health care. It is about the individual. It is about how we can bring data and technology together to help empower the aging population to live healthy, independent, social and productive lives. It is about making a difference."
The app is currently being tested at senior independent living facilities in South Bend, Indiana, and is not yet available to the general public.
Existing apps for seniors
Medisafe is an app for organising medication regimes, providing the users with reminders and family and friends with alerts to let them know when medication has, or has not, been taken.
Lumosity is a brain-training app using games based on the latest discoveries in neuroscience to help improve cognitive abilities.
Meanwhile a popular app combining brain training with social interaction is Words with Friends, an online word game similar which can be played with friends and family, or whose message feature can be used to interact with other players. — AFP Relaxnews
Limited time offer:
Just RM5 per month.
