Wieching, Rainer

In recent years, emerging approaches to chatbot-guided food coaching and dietary management, while innovative and promising in nature, have often lacked long-term studies. Therefore, with this work, we pursued a participatory approach within a design case study to the co-design and development of a nutrition chatbot for elderly people. Overall, 15 participants were directly involved in the study, of which 12 participated in the initial co-design phase, seven in the first real-world evaluation study over four weeks, and three in the second evaluation study over seven weeks. We contribute to the fields of Human-Computer Interaction by showing how the long-term use of such a chatbot in the area of nutrition looks like, which design implications arise for the development of nutrition chatbots, and how a participatory design approach can be realized to design, evaluate and develop nutrition chatbots.

Background The worldwide aging trend requires conceptually new prevention, care, and innovative living solutions to support human-based care using smart technology, and this concerns the whole world. Enabling access to active and healthy aging through personalized digital coaching services like physical activity coaching, cognitive training, emotional well-being, and social connection for older adults in real life could offer valuable advantages to both individuals and societies. A starting point might be the analysis of the perspectives of different professionals (eg, geriatricians) on such technologies. The perspectives of experts in the sector may allow the individualization of areas of improvement of clinical interventions, supporting the positive perspective pointed out by the intrinsic capacity framework. Objective The overall aim of this study was to explore the cross-national perspectives and experiences of different professionals in the field of intrinsic capacity, and how it can be supported by eHealth interventions. To our knowledge, this is the first study to explore geriatric care providers’ perspectives about technology-based interventions to support intrinsic capacity. Methods A survey involving 20 geriatricians or clinical experts in the fields of intrinsic capacity and active and healthy aging was conducted in Italy, France, Germany, and Japan between August and September 2021. Results The qualitative findings pointed out relevant domains for eHealth interventions and provided examples for successful practices that support subjective well-being under the intrinsic capacity framework (the benefits offered by personalized interventions, especially by promoting health literacy but avoiding intrusiveness). Moreover, eHealth interventions could be used as a bridge that facilitates and enables social engagement; an instrument that facilitates communication between doctors and patients; and a tool to enrich the monitoring actions of medical staff. Conclusions There is an unexplored and significant role for such geriatric perspectives to help the development process and evaluate the evidence-based results on the effectiveness of technologies for older people. This is possible only when clinicians collaborate with data scientists, engineers, and developers in order to match the complex daily needs of older adults.

Wieching, Rainer

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