Smart Healthcare: Basic health check-up and monitoring system for elderly

Thailand has become an ageing society. The consequences of the situation appear to be an issue for health organizations to prepare efficient, safe and equitable health care for an aging population. Throughout the past decades, technology has been frequently utilized because it has provided new methods to support the facilitate health care services. In this paper, we studied the health situation of the elderly and proposed the Smart Healthcare system. It consists of a bio-signal measuring prototype (blood pressure, heart rate and temperature) and a web application for both doctors and the elderly. It also includes an alert button. Evaluation was performed in two parts, which were qualitative interviewing and quantitative survey. We interviewed three doctors for confirmation regarding their opinion of the system (i.e. usefulness, visualizing data, and suggestions). Doctors replied that the system is useful for the elderly who are unaware of their own health information; consequently, they may unable to control their own health. For visualizing data, doctors normally view the measured data in number format. For displaying result to the elderly, it should be explained in simple statements that are easy to understand or described using color. Moreover, provision of an alert button is a valuable idea for saving lives. For the quantitative survey, we used the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) as the core model to measure the acceptance by the elderly. Thirty 60–80-year-old elderly people participated in the survey. The result indicated that the elderly is perceived the usefulness of the system and were willing to use it unless they found it difficult to learn or understand because of possible negative attitudes toward new technologies.