Project 458512

Assisted Living Communities (ALCs) function as private, public and healthcare spaces. Older adults in ALCs make their homes, share community resources and receive medical care in the same space. In ALCs, the line between self-managed and supported care is blurred - independent older adults may be active in their own care and receive support from formal (e.g. professional), semi-formal (e.g. volunteer), and informal (e.g. family) caregivers. For example, older adults residing in ALCs may manage some medications on their own, while receiving a nurse's help to administer others; volunteers may drive older adults to their medical appointments; family members may help older adults track their weight. Collaborative care approaches offer both challenges and opportunities for healthcare delivery and technology development. Health information sharing is critical to the delivery of high-quality care in ALCs. However, health information sharing technologies (HISTs) can be challenging to design, as there are many different users and use contexts to accommodate. Co-design includes users in technology development so that new technologies fit their use context. In ALCs, older adults, families and care staff can take the lead in developing HISTs that work for collaborative care in their communities. My thesis research explores how co-design can help ALC stakeholders express their health information sharing needs to create actionable and viable HIST design concepts. In addition, I will identify benefits and challenges of applying co-design to the development of HISTS for ALCs. My research will result in a set of co-design tools and methods aimed at helping older adults and ALC stakeholders take a leadership role in the co-design process. These tools and approaches will be developed, iterated and validated in ALCs, and will produce actionable HIST prototypes that can inform technology developers about the health information sharing needs of ALCs.