IMPLEMENTATION OF LIFE STORY TECHNOLOGY IN RESIDENTIAL CARE SETTINGS: BENEFITS AND BARRIERS

Abstract

Abstract Life story work is a promising intervention in residential care settings to engage persons with dementia (PWD) in meaningful conversation and promote person-centered care. Utilizing technology to streamline the life story collection process brought gerontologists and tech developers together to create LifeBio Memory™: an app which utilizes machine-learning and artificial-intelligence to collect life story data more efficiently than collection by hand. This presentation highlights focus group findings related to the benefits and barriers of this adaptation. Two waves (Time 1 and Time 2) of 60–90-minute (mean=80 SD=14.31) focus groups were conducted via Zoom nine months apart to evaluate the acceptability and feasibility of LifeBio Memory™. In Time 1 (n=35), community-dwelling PWD, residential care staff, and current/former LifeBio program users were asked to provide feedback on 1) their experience with the original version of LifeBio and 2) a prototype of the app. A thematic analysis yielded a list of recommended changes utilized to develop the app. In Time 2 (n=28), participants were asked to provide feedback on 1) training, 2) experience using the app, 3) implementation feasibility, 4) impact on person-centered care. A second thematic analysis was conducted. Across time 1 and 2, participants reported high levels of acceptability and feasibility for the LifeBio Memory™ concept and provided valuable feedback to the tech developers related to future implementation barriers of such technology. This presentation will discuss focus group findings related to 1) benefits of the adaptation, 2) barriers to using the tablet app, 3) implementation of the adaptation.