Using integrated bio-physiotherapy informatics in home health-care settings

The growing need to gain efficiencies within a home care setting has encouraged home care practitioners to focus on health informatics to deal with the needs of an aging clientele. The remote and heterogeneous nature of the home care environment necessitates the use of non-intrusive client monitoring and a portable, point-of-care graphical user interface. Employing a grounded theory approach, this article investigates the simulated use of a graphical user interface by practitioners in a home care setting to explore the salient features of monitoring the activity of home care clients. The results show the need for simple, interactive displays that can provide large amounts of geographical and temporal data relating to patient activity. Additional emerging themes from interviews suggest that home care professionals would use a graphical user interface of this type for patient education and goal setting as well as to aid in the decision-making process of home care practitioners.