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Background. Mobile health (mHealth) interventions hold promise in assisting older adults to meet physical activity (PA) guidelines. Yet, little is known about how older adults perceive using smartphones to enhance their PA. This study explored older adults' experiences with the "My Health Plan" mHealth intervention and examined which person‐level factors were associated with adherence. Methods. Forty older adults (52.5% female, mean age: 72.6 years) were instructed to use the My Health Plan application, which provided up to six stretch‐ and strengthening exercises per day and to wear a Fitbit Charge activity monitor for seven consecutive days. Person‐level factors (e.g., gender and age) and psychosocial factors (e.g., intention and motivation) were assessed using a questionnaire. Afterwards, semistructured interviews were conducted to gather participants' experiences with the application and Fitbit. Deductive thematic analysis (qualitative data) and regression analyses (quantitative data) were conducted. Results. Key themes emerging from the interviews were (1) smartphone notifications (including timing and number) and carrying the smartphone throughout the day, (2) suggested stretch‐ and strengthening exercises, (3) providing feedback, (4) experiences with Fitbit, and (5) overall suggestions for improving the application and mHealth interventions. Overall, participants reported positive experiences with the application and Fitbit. Being male, having higher baseline PA, lower anxiety, and greater ability to participate in social roles and activities were related to increased engagement with the proposed exercises. Conclusions. This study provides valuable insights to optimize future mHealth interventions tailored to older adults' specific needs, aligning with their perceptions of the digital transformation in health promotion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Computerized ICUs rely on software services to convey the medical condition of their patients as well as assisting the staff in taking treatment decisions. Such services are useful for following clinical guidelines quickly and accurately. However, the development of services is often time-consuming and error-prone. Consequently, many care-related activities are still conducted based on manually constructed guidelines. These are often ambiguous, which leads to unnecessary variations in treatments and costs. The goal of this paper is to present a semi-automatic verification and translation framework capable of turning manually constructed diagrams into ready-to-use programs. This framework combines the strengths of the manual and service-oriented approaches while decreasing their disadvantages. The aim is to close the gap in communication between the IT and the medical domain. This leads to a less time-consuming and error-prone development phase and a shorter clinical evaluation phase. Methods A framework is proposed that semi-automatically translates a clinical guideline, expressed as an XML-based flow chart, into a Drools Rule Flow by employing semantic technologies such as ontologies and SWRL. An overview of the architecture is given and all the technology choices are thoroughly motivated. Finally, it is shown how this framework can be integrated into a service-oriented architecture (SOA). Results The applicability of the Drools Rule language to express clinical guidelines is evaluated by translating an example guideline, namely the sedation protocol used for the anaesthetization of patients, to a Drools Rule Flow and executing and deploying this Rule-based application as a part of a SOA. The results show that the performance of Drools is comparable to other technologies such as Web Services and increases with the number of decision nodes present in the Rule Flow. Most delays are introduced by loading the Rule Flows. Conclusions The framework is an effective solution for computerizing clinical guidelines as it allows for quick development, evaluation and human-readable visualization of the Rules and has a good performance. By monitoring the parameters of the patient to automatically detect exceptional situations and problems and by notifying the medical staff of tasks that need to be performed, the computerized sedation guideline improves the execution of the guideline.

In 2013, the Flemish Government launched the Vitalink platform. This initiative focuses on the sharing of health and welfare data to support primary healthcare. In this paper, the objectives and mission of the Vitalink initiative are discussed. Security and privacy measures are reviewed, and the technical implementation of the Vitalink platform is presented. Through a case study, the possibility of interaction with cloud solutions for healthcare is also investigated upon; this was initially not the focus of Vitalink. The Vitalink initiative provides support for secure data sharing in primary healthcare, which in the long term will improve the efficiency of care and will decrease costs. Based on the results of the case study, Vitalink allowed cloud solutions or applications not providing end-to-end security to use their system. The most important lesson learned during this research was the need for firm regulations and stipulations for cloud solutions to interact with the Vitalink platform. However, these are currently still vague. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The medical staff in a hospital could benefit from a specialized task management system, considering their high workload covering different patients. This article presents an intelligent task management platform that automatically prioritizes and (re-)assigns tasks to the appropriate caregivers based on the current health care context captured in a continuous care ontology. Moreover, this platform provides the caregivers with a smartphone allowing them to easily view and process their assigned tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Objectives: With the uprise of the Internet of Things, wearables and smartphones are moving to the foreground. Ambient Assisted Living solutions are, for example, created to facilitate ageing in place. One example of such systems are fall detection systems. Currently, there exists a wide variety of fall detection systems using different methodologies and technologies. However, these systems often do not take into account the fall handling process, which starts after a fall is identified or this process only consists of sending a notification. The FallRisk system delivers an accurate analysis of incidents occurring in the home of the older adults using several sensors and smart devices. Moreover, the input from these devices can be used to create a social-aware event handling process, which leads to assisting the older adult as soon as possible and in the best possible way.Methods: The FallRisk system consists of several components, located in different places. When an incident is identified by the FallRisk system, the event handling process will be followed to assess the fall incident and select the most appropriate caregiver, based on the input of the smartphones of the caregivers. In this process, availability and location are automatically taken into account.Results: The event handling process was evaluated during a decision tree workshop to verify if the current day practices reflect the requirements of all the stakeholders. Other knowledge, which is uncovered during this workshop can be taken into account to further improve the process.Conclusions: The FallRisk offers a way to detect fall incidents in an accurate way and uses context information to assign the incident to the most appropriate caregiver. This way, the consequences of the fall are minimized and help is at location as fast as possible. It could be concluded that the current guidelines on fall handling reflect the needs of the stakeholders. However, current technology evolutions, such as the uptake of wearables and smartphones, enables the improvement of these guidelines, such as the automatic ordering of the caregivers based on their location and availability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]