Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
(a) Willingness to adopt G
IRAFF
(b) G
IRAFF
vs other teleconference systems
Fig. 2.
General assessment of the G
IRAFF
system
Health Workers as Clients
Participants and Procedure.
Forty-four health workers
4
from different specialist areas
were recruited for this study. The sample interviewed so far is composed by 26 women
and 18 men with a mean age of 42 years,
SD
=12
.
2
.
The meeting entailed a tutorial presentation of 20 minutes to describe features and
functionalities of the telepresence robot. After this tutorial, a practical session allowed
the health workers to operate the system and experience the different functionalities.
Following the tutorial a focus group was conducted and a final questionnaire was ad-
ministrated to assess possible applications of the telepresence robot, the perceived ad-
vantages and disadvantages of the system, the patient profile best suited to benefit from
the use of an aid-based on telepresence.
Results
General Assessment.
A first analysis of the results showed a positive reaction of the
participants to the system. In particular 66% of participants would be willing to use
G
IRAFF
as an aid support in his/her profession as well as no one opposes the use of
robots (see Figure 2a). In addition most of them judge the telepresence robot as a better
tool with respect to traditional teleconference system like Skype (see Figure 2b).
Profile of Potential Users.
Results also identify the categories of people who could
benefit from the use of telepresence robots: specifically, the category “self-sufficient
or semi-autonomous elderly living alone” has been mentioned by 35% of respondents;
25% of the subjects also indicates “adults and elderly patients in home care and with
special needs”, such as patients in isolation for infection, dialysis patients or with
chronic diseases such as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) or diabetes).
A 20% of the responses were grouped into the category “older people with early or
mild dementia”. Two other categories were “adults or elderly with physical disabili-
ties” (17%) and “young people and adults with intellectual disabilities” (7%).
4
A preliminary version of this paper [13] reported results with a limited number of subjects.
This paper reports on a specifically recruited enlarged sample.
