Events Calendar

Epstein Institute / ISE 651 Seminar Series

Speaker: Dr. Patricia Flatley Brennan, Lillian L. Moehlman Bascom Professor, School of Nursing and College of Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, RN, PhD

Talk Title: A Context-Based Health Information Needs Assessment Strategy

Abstract: Accelerating the design of technologies to support health in the home requires 1) better understanding of how the household context shapes consumer health behaviors and (2) the opportunity to afford engineers, designers and health professionals the chance to systematically study the home environment. We developed the Living Environments Laboratory (LEL) with a fully immersive, six-sided virtual reality CAVE to enable recreating of a broad range of household environments. We have successfully developed a virtual apartment, including a kitchen, living space and bathroom. Yet these spaces lack the accouterments of actual homes, characterized by clutter, personal decorations, and casual organization of furniture. In order to better understand how household context shapes personal health information management we will undertake an extensive study of 20 households addressing the social, physical, psychological, technical and health services context of PHIM, including creating detailed photographic, video, and 3D reconstructions of these households in a virtual reality CAVE; (2) through recursive immersive exploration in the CAVE, enumerate the features of these households that shape PHIM; (3) enlist 20 people self-identified with diabetes in a requirements validation activity in the CAVE; (4) engage 60 people with diabetes in an experimental evaluation of these indicators and (5) use all of these results to develop and evaluate, in a field assessment of 200 households, an Assessment of the Context of Home Environments inventory. The reference set of 20 virtual homes will be distributed through Creative Commons for repeated studies by designers. We will also make available the Assessment of the Context of Home Environments (ACHE) protocol for rapid assessments of the home context. This interdisciplinary project brings together nurses, engineers, computer scientists, and health services researchers to explicate how the home context shapes health information needs and can be used to guide the design of consumer health information management solutions.

Supported by a grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, R01 HS022548

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 03, 2013
OLIN HALL OF ENGINEERING (OHE) ROOM 100D
3:30 - 4:50 PM


Biography: Patricia Flatley Brennan, RN, PhD, is the Lillian L. Moehlman Bascom Professor, School of Nursing and College of Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin. Dr. Brennan received a Masters of Science in Nursing from the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD in Industrial Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She developed several innovative home care computer and HIT innovations, including ComputerLink, and HeartCare, and is National Program Director of Project HealthDesign. Brennan elaborated the broad range of patient-generated data including home-based sensors, self-monitoring devices, and Observations of Daily Living. Brennan leads the Living Environments Laboratory at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, which includes a 6-sided virtual reality CAVE that her group uses to re-create visually every environment on earth, and develop new ways for effective visualization of high dimensional data. She is fellow of both the American Academy of Nursing (1991) and the American College of Medical Informatics (1993). Dr. Brennan was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2002, and in 2009 became an elected member of the New York Academy of Medicine.

Host: Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems

More Information: Seminar-Brennan.pdf

Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 100D

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Neha Mundada