Providing Adaptive Health Updates Across the Personal Social Network

Abstract

This article presents research conducted to establish how information is shared across the personal social network in the sensitive context of a health crisis. We worked with parents of very sick babies who were cared for in a hospital's Neonatal Unit (NNU). Through a combination of interviews, a focus group, and surveys, we developed a user model of the information that parents wanted to share, and how they adapted this information to individual recipients. We then developed a prototype software tool which created adaptive updates for members of the parents' social network. The updates contained summaries of large volumes of complex medical data about the baby, nonmedical information about the parents, and practical information about the hospital. Updates were automatically adapted to individual members of parents' social networks, based on our user model. The tool was evaluated in a large NNU in the United Kingdom with parents of babies who were currently being cared for in the unit.

A Guide to Using Asynchronous Remote Communities (ARC) for Researching Distributed Populations

“…Moncur et al [32] conducted a focus group with mothers where they asked participants to use Post-it notes to write down different types of information they gave out when their baby was in the hospital. They had participants organize these Post-it notes on a wall grouped by social network hierarchy layers [21].…”

Supporting carers through intelligent technology

“…Others facilitate mediated communication between a personal social network to obtain support or practical help (e.g. in the domain of neonatal care [10]) though there is no research in the domain of carers.…”

“…Identifying the different layers of social network will allow a software agent to offer a different quality of mediated communication to close and distant friends, found to be effective for neo-natal care infant parents [10]. It is also important in identifying frequency of contact required for effective network maintenance.…”

Rare World

“…For example, Moncur et al [6] describe information sharing and receiving preferences for different types of relationships, and propose a system for delivering appropriate updates to relevant audiences. Newman et al [7] found that conflict existed between the benefits people hoped to gain from online communities and their goal of impression management [2]; needing support conflicted with a desire to have others view their health status favourably.…”