10th EAI International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare

Research Article

Looking for the Unusual: How Older Adults Utilize Self-Tracking Techniques for Health Management

  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.4108/eai.16-5-2016.2263771,
        author={Clara Caldeira and Matthew Bietz and Yunan Chen},
        title={Looking for the Unusual: How Older Adults Utilize Self-Tracking Techniques for Health Management},
        proceedings={10th EAI International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare},
        publisher={ACM},
        proceedings_a={PERVASIVEHEALTH},
        year={2016},
        month={6},
        keywords={self-tracking self-monitoring quantified self personal informatics elderly older adults},
        doi={10.4108/eai.16-5-2016.2263771}
    }
    
  • Clara Caldeira
    Matthew Bietz
    Yunan Chen
    Year: 2016
    Looking for the Unusual: How Older Adults Utilize Self-Tracking Techniques for Health Management
    PERVASIVEHEALTH
    EAI
    DOI: 10.4108/eai.16-5-2016.2263771
Clara Caldeira1,*, Matthew Bietz1, Yunan Chen1
  • 1: University California, Irvine
*Contact email: claram@uci.edu

Abstract

Self-tracking applications for health management have become popular both in industry and in academia. Half of older adults in the U.S. track health indicators, but they rarely use technology for that purpose. We conduct a qualitative study to investigate older adults' self-tracking practices in order to understand their needs as potential users of self-tracking technology. Our data indicates that monitoring the onset of abnormal changes in health is a primary reason for tracking for this population. This finding suggests that self-tracking technology that targets elderly users must assist them to identify changes in health condition.