Persuasive technology 2020 conference

The Persuasive Technology conference brings together international researchers and practitioners from industry and academia who are working in the field of behaviour design and persuasive technologies. Instead of gathering to Aalborg, Denmark, Persuasive Technology 2020 conference was arranged as a virtual event, due to CoVid19 situation. On LinkedIn the group Persuasive Technology Network hosted the event and most of the presentations were shared as videos.

HIBA was presented as a poster in a virtual poster session!

See the poster in pdf-format:

Persuasive 2020 poster for LinkedIn Enwald_v2

On the side of the conference the Eighth International workshop on behavior change support systems (BCSS 2020) was hold as a virtual event via Zoom. In this event, member of HIBA research project, Heidi Enwald, had a interdisciplinary presentation titled “Combining personalization, tailoring, persuasive design and gamification – Where do we stand?” The presentation cultivated discussion on how same phenomena are approached from different standpoints of research and why it would be so important to follow what is done and published in other research fields.

 

ASIST 2019

The Annual Meeting of Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) was organized in Melbourne, Australia at 19th to 23rd October 2019.

The theme of the conference was INFORMATION… ANYONE, ANYWHERE, ANY TIME, ANY WAY

ASIST could be considered as one of the main conferences of Library and Information Science (LIS) field. This year conference was already 82nd meeting of this research community. This was the second time ever outside of North America and first time it was organized in Australia!

The keynote speakers

In her opening keynote ‘Mixing reality for cultural proliferation’ Mikaela Jade discussed her journey as an Indegenous woman building a technology company Indigital. The company works to develop new ways to digitise and translate knowledge and culture from remote communities.

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Opening keynote photo from ASIST 2019 pages

Helena Teede, an Endocrinologist, the Executive Director of Monash Partners Academic Health Sciences Centre and Director of the Monash Centre for Health Research and Implementation, School of Public Health, Monash University gave the closing keynote ‘Changing the Paradigm: Driving Disruption Through Collaboration to Create a Learning Health System’.

She talked about the lack of strategic planning of research, silos & lack of systems approaches. The ideas of data-driven healthcare improvement were strongly present in her statements and she also called for metrics to guide action in healthcare.

General notions and an example of a panel

Regarding to education in LIS field, data science seemed to be a hot topic, especially in the USA. Several sessions related to this discussion. Past was pondered, e.g., in a panel named Does Information Science Need History and Foundations? Furthermore, also the future of the field raised in the discussions. ASIST has always presentations and panels from a wide spectrum of topics and this year was not an exception. Everything between Breaking Social Media Bubbles for Information Globalization to Research Data Sharing Across National Borders. The Final Program Booklet can be found from here.

As an example of the several interesting panel discussions available in the conference we highlight here one.

Kristina attended a panel discussion about digital equity for marginalized and displaced people. The panellists were Gregory Rolan and Sue McKemmish, both from Monash University, Australia, Kathy Carbone from UCLA, USA, and Barbara Reed from Recordkeeping Innovation in Australia. The theme included for example refugees, stateless people or otherwise geographically displaced people but also children taken into custody. Digital equity was seen as equity for all in new and emerging digital information systems, also those who do not participate within the digital sphere. Documentation overall was seen as central, both the right to having ones information kept in records, and to know where possible records exist, what they contain and why they have been created. These records can be of different kinds, including digital health records. In addition to more formal records, also, for example, children in care could have apps where they can keep their own records.

HIBA project

The members of HIBA were well presented in the panel discussion “Information Behaviour and Practices Research Informing Technology and Service Design”.

The panel discussion, lead by Noora Hirvonen, included short presentations from Isto Huvila (via a video), Ying-Shang Liu, Kristina Eriksson-Backa and Heidi Enwald.

The panel discussion, lead by Noora Hirvonen, included short presentations from Isto Huvila (via a video), Ying-Shang Liu, Kristina Eriksson-Backa and Heidi Enwald. After the presentations the discussion was openned and we received many interesting and lively questions and comments.

Isto discussed archaeology-related information work and practices in relation to development of documentation and information management technologies and services. Heidi talked about her research about health promotion e-health services design and HIL from the projects MOPO, GASEL and PrevMetSyn.

Ying-Hsang Liu from Australian National University in Canberra presented his work with engineers in the aerospace industry, for whom he is a consultant. According to him, industry understands challenges but may not have solutions and hence IBP models and theories are important. Engineers are also interested in metrics and hence we need to communicate with them about metrics, what results can be expected. In industry, time is valuable; results might be needed within a certain time limit. There is also a challenge with working with industry projects in that they are concerned about intellectual property and thus results might have to be kept secret.

Kristina presented the HIBA project and three of the studies conducted within it: the online survey study on diabetes risk test users by Hai Nguyen, the focus group study of older adults’ views on MyKanta and the recently conducted national survey of 1500 Finns aged 55-70 years, and their health information behaviour and views of e-health services. Some implications concerning the format and contents of e-health services based on the results were presented.

More info about our panel:

Huvila I, Enwald H, Eriksson-Backa K, Liu Y-H & Hirvonen N (2019) Information behaviour and practises research informing technology and service design. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology , 56(1), 541-545. ASIS&T 2019, Melbourne, Australia, 19-23 October 2019. (Panels and alternative events) https://asistdl.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/pra2.86?af=R

We also had time to go and meet some penguins!

About ASIST: https://www.asist.org/

2020 ASIS&T Annual Meeting goes to Pittsburgh!

Visiting Australian researchers

ASIST 2019 conference was organised in Melbourne in the end of October 2019. Members of HIBA participated this conference, but as you travel so far from Finland, it also makes sense to visit local researchers that work on topics interesting to HIBA. Luckily, I had an opportunity to do exactly this.

SYDNEY

In Sydney I visited professor Kirsten McCaffery, the leader of Health Literacy Lab in the University of Sydney. They are a research group at the University of Sydney School of Public Health.

University of Sydney

Furthermore, I spend a day with the faculty members of IKM and Digital Studies Program, University of Technology Sydney (UTS). I had the priviledge to have Senior lecturer Bhuva Narayan as my host for this visit. The discussions varied from differences of countries statuses in eHealth, research on older adults to teaching Information Studies related topics.

Bhuva and Heidi and inspiring discussions!

UTS, University of Technology Sydney

WOLLONGONG

In Wollongong I was taken a good care by the faculty members of Centre for Persuasive Technology and Society, in University of Wollongong. During a two day visit I also met local PhD students.

Workshop together with local PhD students

CANBERRA

In Canberra I met several researchers from Australian National University (ANU).

From ANU Institute for Communication in Health Care professor Diana Slade kindly found time to chat with me about the research done in their research group and in HIBA.

I also had lively discussion with Associate Professor Hanna Suominen, originally from Turku. The topics varied from strategic Our Health in Our Hands research initiate to differences of doing research and living in Finland and in Australia.

Enthusiastic visitor

Dr Ying-Hsang Liu showed me kindly around the campus and Canberra and future research topics were invented e.g., over a lovely japanese dinner.

Heidi and Ying-Hsang

MELBOURNE

Before the conference, and arrival of HIBA colleagues Kristina and Noora, I had a really nice unofficial breakfast meeting with Rebecca French from Victorian Health Promotion Foundation.

Meeting Rebecca

During my visit, in addition to researchers, I also saw a lot of beautiful landscapes, big cities and also some native animals 🙂 Overall the trip was a success!

Wallabi said Hi!

Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS 2018)

PACIS 2018 was organized in 26th to 30th June in Yokohama, Japan. It invited submissions in current and emerging areas of Information Systems research, especially those related to the conference theme “Opportunities and Challenges for the Digitized Society: Are We Ready?”

The annual conference offered keynote speeches and several concurrent tracks in addition to workshops. Tracks focused e.g., on smart cities, e-government, human computer interaction, IS education and e-learning and IS in healthcare.

The first keynote was given by Ikujirō Nonaka, emeritusprofessor, best known for his study of knowledge management. Nonaka has also proposed the SECI model, to present the spiraling knowledge processes of interaction between explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge.

Keynote by Nonaka

PACIS had attracted over 500 registered participants from all around the world. The conference took place in very modern Minato Mirai district in Yokohama.

Sight of Minato Mirai, the central business district of Yokohama.

Lunch with a view. Bentō lunch box provided at the conference.

HIBA-project presented work in progress by Nguyen, Eriksson-Backa and Enwald with the title: Preliminary results of a survey on user opinions and experiences on an online diabetes risk test.

Heidi Enwald presenting the poster by HIBA project.

Finland was nicely represented also as the best paper award was given to Finnish-Australian collaboration:

Ethical Evaluation of a Value Sensitive Persuasive System: Case Milky Way
by Liisa Kuonanoja (University of Oulu), Shahla Meedya (University of Wollongong), Khin Than Win (University of Wollongong) and Harri Oinas-Kukkonen (University of Oulu)

The conference proceedings and also our paper can be found here:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1aI6jwwAAF40h238qsR85n7Er1ZOdQFmf

 

MIE and VITALIS in Gothenburg, April 2018

Medical Informatics Europe (MIE) conference was arranged in Gothenburg, Sweden in 24.-26.4.2018. At the same time Scandinavian eHealth event, VITALIS, took place in the same premises.

MIE covers a wide range of topics relating to medical informatics – from health literacy, different eHealth tools to data mining.

The first MIE was hosted in Cambridge, UK in 1978 and therefore MIE2018 marked the 40th anniversary for the conference. MIE2018 offered around 200 oral and 150 poster presentations. In addition, there were around 50 workshops, demonstrations and tutorials to attend to.

MIE2018 and Vitalis

Tuesday started early with a set of sessions and workshops. From HIBA research group Heidi Enwald was one of the organizers and presenters of the workshop “Re-defining eHealth Literacy for the 21st century. Discussing the evolution of the concept from different perspectives”.

In the workshop and, also afterwards, different definitions and measures of eHealth literacy were discussed. It was seen that we also need to get forward from discussing these issues; we need to identify what differentiates eHealth literacy from other health related literacy concepts, what are the future skills and abilities that relate to this concept and how should they be addressed. Heidi Enwald represents HIBA group in eHealth literacy network that continues discussion around the topic.

After Opening ceremony a Keynote speech was given by Patricia Flatley Brennan, the director of National Library of Medicine.

Keynote speech by Patricia Brennan

She spoke, among other things, about data-powered health that includes optimizing medication effectiveness, more efficient pathogen detection and targeted therapies. She mentioned that the nature of evidence in evidence-based medicine is also about to change. Furthermore, data does not take care of itself and therefore, e.g., data savvy librarians are needed.

As mentioned, MIE2018 provided many overlapping sessions to choose from and the decision was not always easy. Aging did not rise as a topic in many presentations, but there were some. For instance, Madeleine Blusi from Umeå University talked about aging in rural areas and their project that utilizes participatory design and attempts to create a service for including aged people into social activities they would otherwise no longer be able to join.

Madeleine Blusi from Umeå University

The VITALIS exhibition area was also available to visit by the participants of MIE2018.

Several kind of meetings were made possible by MIE2018 and VITALIS

The exhibition mostly contained booths of Swedish eHealth companies and made possible also the discussions between, e.g., researchers and advocates of industry.

The proceedings book of the conference is open access and can be found from the website:

https://mie2018.org/home/proceedings/

ZPID Symposium – Health Literacy Across the Life Span

Leibniz Institute for Psychology Information, ZPID organized a one day symposium “Health Literacy Across the Life Span” at 10th of March 2017. The day included interesting speakers from Germany and Finland from multiple backgrounds. The symposium was intentionally kept as small-scale and the aim was to sustain discussion and possible future collaboration.

Renate Soellner from University of Hildesmein, Germany told about research project ”Health competence – model building and validation”. They developed, tested and validated a qualitative structural model (so called concept-map) on health literacy. The main questions were: Which skills and abilities build the health literacy construct? How do health competent persons behave? An article has been published on the model (Soellner, Lehartz & Rudinger 2017). Central concepts of the model are self-control and self-regulation.

Sonia Lippke from Jacobs University Bremen, Germany started her talk by telling about the HAPA model (Schwartzer 1992) In this health behaviour change model self-efficacy is one central factor and the goals turn into  plans that turn into behavior. Non-intender becomes intender and finally actor. Health literacy can be seen as part of this model. According to Lippke the main deficiency on this model is that is focuses only on one behaviour at time. Therefore she has been involved in developing a new ”lifestyle change model” called Compensatory Carry-Over Action Model (CCAM).

Sonia Lippke

Maija-Leena Huotari from University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland told about the research project conducted at Information Studies in University of Oulu and Åbo Akademi University. She talked about the everyday health information literacy (EHIL) screening tool (Niemelä et al. 2012) and about the new research project, CogAHealth, that is funded by Academy of Finland and has started in Autumn 2016. In this project the concept of cognitive authority is central and Huotari spoke also about it´s connection to EHIL.

Anne-Kathrin Mayer and Maija-Leena Huotari

Cristiane Firnges from Robert Koch Institute, Berlin, Germany pointed out the need to develop health literacy measures for younger populations, i.e., age-specific assessment tools. She belongs to Health Literacy in Childhood and Adolescence (HLCA) Consortium: https://www.hlca-consortium.de/

Firnges and her colleagues have been developing of MOHLAA-measuring instrument. HLS-EU-Q47 (e.g., Sorensen et al. 2013) measure was used as a blueprint. Not all tems and items contents of the HLS-EU-Q47 were well understood by adolescents or they might have answered them based on hypothetical estimations/lack of experience. There was found to be a need to adapt particular items for adolescents´cognitive abilities and to their lifeworld and experiences. Limited experiences with navigating the health care system and managing diseases was obvious among the teenagers. Critical thinking is still challenge and they might be overly confident about their skills. Adolescents, especially younger ones, have strong trust to their parents.

Anne-Kathrin Mayer and Cristiane Firnges

Orkan Okan from University of Bielefeld, Germany presented the childhood perspective. Measuring health literacy of primary school-aged children (MoMChild study). He started by telling about a systematic literature review on health literacy instruments and what of them have been used for children. Okan and his colleagues has been adapting HLS-EU-Q for this age group and they are now collecting large-scale data among German children.

Orkan Okan

Anne-Kathrin Mayer Research coordinator of Leibniz Institute for Psychology Information, ZPID told about the health information literacy knowledge test (HILK) they have developed and tested. The test includes 24 items and at the latest stage it has been tested among 144 students. They have also worked on validating the test.

Veronika Kuhberg is a doctoral student at ZPID. Her presentation focused on determinants of health information literacy (HILK) in vocational school students and especially to the role of locus of control and personal beliefs. Especially external health locus of control seems to be an independent factor affecting health information literacy among this population group.

Papers will be written based on the presentations and they will be published later as a book. The day was very fruitful and I thank for Anne-Kathrin Mayer for inviting me to participate!

Heidi

Learning about information literacy at ECIL and participating ASIST

The European Conference on Information Literacy (ECIL) took place at Prague, Czech Republic at 10.-13.10.2016. Straight after ECIL the Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIST) gathered researchers all around the world to Copenhagen, Denmark. Timing of the conferences provided me a great opportunity to join both of the conferences.

ECIL is initiated and organized by the Department of Information Management of Hacettepe University and Department of Information and Communication Sciences of Zagreb University. The main theme this year was Information Literacy in the Inclusive Society. IMG_9144_ECIL_blogiin

The keynote speeches were given by Tara Brabazon and Jan Van Dijk, and futhermore, invited speakers were Ole Pilerot, Vít Šisler and Annemaree Lloyd. Especially the keynote speeches raised discussion as Tara was intentionally very provocative in her speech and Jan´s perspective was from outside of the information and library science field.

As a member of the HIBA project I presented some of our results relating to older adults health information literacy skills. The study presented was part of the GASEL study.

WP_20161010_17_44_11_Pro_blogiin Heidi

Heidi´s PechaKucha presentation on “everyday health information literacy of older people in Finland”.

ECIL focused strongly on libraries and information literacy teaching, but there was always also a more theoretical and/or general paper or panel sessions to attend for.

IMG_9410_ECIL blogiin

Example of the interesting panel discussions in ECIL.

The abstract book of ECIL can be found here: http://ecil2016.ilconf.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/ECIL2016_BoA.pdf and selected full text papers will be later published in a ECIL’s Proceedings Books are  published by Springer (agreement with the publisher is on yearly basis) under Communications in Computer and Information Science series (CCIS).

ASIST´s theme was Creating Knowledge, Enhancing Lives through Information & Technology. Plenary speeches were given by Greg Welch from University of Central Florida and by Markus Bundschus from Roche Diagnostics.

The topics of ASIST presentations and panels covered all from health information behaviour to digital data curation and the science of games. In addition to sessions relating to information behaviour I found myself listening sessions about e.g., multiculturalism of LIS education, digital sociology and information science research, open peer review and lifelogging. Examples of the panels in ASIST: IMG_9862_ASIST blogiinIMG_9811_ASIST blogiin

ASIST included not only paper presentations and panels but also several poster presentations. Again I was there presenting the results relating HIBA and GASEL projects. This time the topic was “opinions and use of mobile information technology around older people”.

IMG_9828_ASIST blogiin Heidi

Heidi with the poster.

The ASIST proceedings and information of the previous conferences can be found here (free view for ASIST members): https://www.asist.org/publications/annual-meeting-proceedings/

Older people were present also in the street view of Copenhagen with a campaign “Do we ever stop dreaming?”

IMG_9796_ASIST_blogiin

Next ECIL will be organized in St-Malo, France and next ASIST at Washington DC. Shall we meet there?

(Post blog written by Heidi Enwald)

Nordic eHealth 2016 The 21st Finnish National Conference on Telemedicine and eHealth

The participants of Scandinavian Nordic eHealth 2016 conference and the seminar of Finnish Society of Telemedicine and Health cruised onboard of M/S Mariella on the Baltic Sea at 14th to 16th of April 2016.

Finnish Society of Telemedicine and eHealth has been promoting the use of information and communication technology in health care since 1995. This year’s conference theme was digitalisation and experimentation culture that describes quite well ongoing

transformation where digitalisation is challenging health services.
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The conference lectures covered topics from EU’s eHealth strategy, and presents the Nordic case studies on the development of digital services.
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Head of Unit Tapani Piha, Cross-Border Healthcare & eHealth, EU

The future of Finnish My Kanta and personal health record were introduced.
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Delegates of Iceland and Norway enlightened us about the eHealth services and telehealth development in these countries. From the researchers perspective it was also a pleasure to hear about examples of the research done relating to the topic.
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Example of the research done at Norway.

In Sweden a large study had been conducted relating to attitudes and opinions on the electronic health record for citizens.
IMG_6372_Ruotsin_Inera
Nordic countries are not alone in struggling with the challenges of eHealth and telemedicine. The seminar participants were told about the eHealth group, established by The Nordic Council of Ministers (NCM), in 2010 for knowledge transfer between the Nordic countries and Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland, to strengthen the Nordic global leadership position in the eHealth area and to raise awareness of eHealth as an instrument for modernisation of the health care systems. In 2012, the eHealth group established a subgroup – The Nordic eHealth Research Network (NeRN) – to develop, test and access a common set of indicators for monitoring eHealth in the region to be used by policy makers and scientific communities in supporting development of Nordic Welfare. The Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) was selected as a coordinator of the network.
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Hannele Hyppönen from THL

On the second day of the conference Finnish healthcare projects and companies had their change to present themselves. The conference also included poster sessions, time for social interaction and healthcare-related site visits at Stockholm.
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In the poster session also posters of the GASEL-project were presented.

At the conference several awards were delivered. The Finnish National eHealth award was given to PhD Teija Norri-Sederholm for her doctoral thesis “On top of the situation! From information needs to shared knowledge – Emergency response centre operator’s and paramedic field supervisor’s situational awareness”. The work has received a lot of positive media coverage, but it also works well as a reference material for example in the training of emergency response centre operators.

eServices for healthy ageing – GASEL study: final seminar

I have been working as a researcher in multidisciplinary GASEL study (http://www.oulu.fi/gasel/gasel) funded by Tekes in 2014-2016. The project is ending and its final seminar was organized at 9th Feb 2016 in Oulu, Finland. The topic was eServices for healthy ageing.

In the beginning of the seminar the vice leader of GASEL Timo Jämsä and responsible leader Raija Korpelainen introduced the GASEL project and also other research activities among older people in Oulu. At GASEL, information on e.g., special needs of older people and aspects relating to their health have been mapped from existing knowledge (collected at http://www.oulu.fi/gasel/esiselvitys) and by a population-based questionnaire survey. The questionnaire was posted to 1500 people aged 65 or more, living in Oulu area and being home dwellers. The return rate was 61 percent (n=918).

GASEL study

The questionnaire included questions relating to attitudes towards health information, health information literacy, personality, life satisfaction, use of exercise technology, fracture and fall history, medications, sleep, social environment, nature relationship, use of information technology, gaming etc. One important issue was physical activity. It is generally known that physical activity has positive effect on health, wellness, ability for independent living, and physical functioning.

At the seminar, project manager Maarit Kangas told us about factors and actors associated with wellbeing of senior citizens. For example, 50 percent of the survey respondents stated that they were moving around more than 2 h/day. From them 45 percent stated being in at least good health and 79 percent stated feeling happy or quite happy.

Researcher Niina Keränen spoke about ICT use and gaming of older people. According to the GASEL survey seniors play games, including digital games. Stigma against gaming in older age was not a major issue for the seniors of GASEL study.

Researcher Milla Immonen shared preliminary results relating to falls and nutrition. Falls are a major problem in western societies and the reasons behind falls are multifactorial. Nutrition is not commonly taken into account in fall prevention (e.g., in interventions), even though naturally nutrition (e.g., malnutrition) affects our wellbeing.  However, according to the results of GASEL study there is a clear connection between falls and nutrition.

Posters presenting results from GASEL study

Posters presenting results from GASEL study

GASEL is a funded by Tekes and therefore erterprises are involved. At the seminar researcher Heidi Similä told about the participatory testing of enterprises products and services. Testing had been done by conducting workshops, focus group evaluation, testing events and expert evaluation. By the means of testing, information about the target groups’ needs and attitudes towards technology, and about issues related to usability and acceptability of new technologies has been collected.

At the seminar my presentation focused on how tailoring can be used in eHealth services and on what kind of results were found in GASEL survey relating to older people´s health information behaviour and attitudes towards health information. Information content of eHealth services and also interface and elements of service can be tailored. Through (computer) tailoring different kind of individuals are provided with different kind of content or elements. E.g., person´s health information literacy level, measured with a short questionaire while logging to the eHealth service, could be used as a basis for tailoring. It would impact on what kind of information, and in what form, would the service provide to the person. The preliminary result of GASEL survey indicate, for example, that men are more likely to consider that health related stories and articles are too long and that Individuals in the oldest age group (80 years or older) are most likely to avoid thinking about exercise.

We had a privilege to hear also two presentations from the collaborators of GASEL study. Professor Lars Nyberg and Margareta Lilja from Luleå University of Technology, Sweden, gave a presentation titled ”Active and safe in old age: postural control and home and social environment issues”. And we ended with a presentation by Mika Luimula from Turku University of Applied Sciences. He told us about their interesting Tekes-funded Gamified Solutions in Healthcare –project.

Nyberg, Lilja and Korpelainen

Lars Nyberg, Margareta Lilja and Raija Korpelainen

Luimula

Mika Luimula

HIBA continues the work done in GASEL study focusing on users of eHealth services from the viewpoint of Information Studies.

Blog post by Heidi Enwald, researcher in GASEL study and in HIBA project.