JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The global percentage of elderly people is increasing significantly over the last decades. The use of information and communication technologies has become essential to develop motivate them to pursue healthier ways of living. In this work a coaching personalized healthcare services that can ensure the living conditions and active aging of the elderly people. Among these technologies it is highlighted the use of both gamification and cognitive assistant technologies designed to support elderly people and an application is presented combining both a cognitive virtual assistant to directly interact with the elderly person and provide feedback on his/her current health condition, and several gamification techniques to motivate the elderly person to stay engaged with the application and pursuit healthier daily habits.

Objective:

This pilot study aimed to investigate the feasibility and usability of a gamified agent-based system for elderly people and obtain preliminary results on the effectiveness of the intervention regarding physical activity health outcomes.

Methods:

The study was designed as an intervention study comparing pretest and posttest results. The proposed gamified agent-based system was used by 12 participants over the duration of 7 days (1 week) and step count data was collected with access to Google Fit API. Step count data after the intervention was next compared with average step count data before the intervention (average daily values over a period of 4 weeks previous to the intervention). Student t test was used to determine the relation between the dependent and independent variables. Usability was measured using the System Usability Scare questionnaire which was answered by 8 of the 12 participants in the study

Results:

The posttest results were significantly high in terms of pre- and posttest changes (P=.017; Student t test), with a moderate effect size (Coehn’s D of 0.77). In terms of usability, the developed application obtained an average usability score of 78.

Conclusions:

The presented pilot was validated showing the positive health effects on the use of gamification techniques together with the use of a virtual cognitive assistant. Additionally, usability metrics considered for this study confirmed the high adherence and interest from most of the participants to the pilot.