Abstract
Population aging is related to a huge growth in healthcare and welfare costs. Therefore, wearable devices could be strategic for minimizing years of disability in old age and monitoring patients’ lifestyles and health. The purpose of this study was to assess the feasibility of using smart devices to monitor patients’ physical activity in a primary care setting. To assess the acceptance of this novel technology from the point of view of both patients and healthcare professionals, two questionnaires (one paper-based and one ex-novo developed) were administered to 11 patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and a non-compliant behavior towards the therapeutic indications of their general practitioner (GP). Seven participants would continue to use a wearable activity tracker to monitor their health. We observed that 75% of patients reported a device’s characteristics satisfaction level of over 80% of the total score assigned to this dimension. No differences were observed in the questionnaire’s scores between the two professionals categories (GPs and nurses). Three dimensions (equipment characteristics, subjective norm, perceived risks, perceived ease-of-use and facilitating conditions) correlated > 0.5 with the device’s acceptability level. Some weak correlations were observed between healthcare professionals’ perception and patients’ parameters, particularly between the dimensions of collaboration and web interface ease-of-use and patients’ median number of steps and hours of sleep. In conclusion, despite the limited number of subjects involved, a good acceptance level towards these non-medical devices was observed, according to both patients’ and healthcare professionals’ impressions.
Highlights
A convenience sample of subjects living in this territory was recruited among those referred to each general practitioner (GP) participating in the study
Despite the limited number of subjects involved in this study, it was observed that there is a good acceptance level towards these non-medical devices, according to both patients’ and healthcare professionals’ impressions, even if these results should be interpreted carefully
It should be underlined that such devices are non-medical ones, and they could be available for all subjects, potentially making patients’ monitoring possible without costs for the NHS, by checking the already captured data
Summary
It is well known that the population is aging. Life expectancy is constantly increasing, in developed countries and in developing ones. Aging is a phenomenon that involves the entire world population. In the Italian context, Istat [1] data show that the men’s average lifespan will shift from. 77.4 years in 2005 to 83.6 years in 2050, and for women, it will rise from 83.3 to 88.8 years. The amount of over 65 individuals, which today is the 20.3% of the population, will rise to over 32% in 2043 [2,3]
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