Intergenerational mHealth Diabetes Program OPPORTUNITIES PROGRAM IN TAIWAN

Summary

The primary purpose of the study is to understand the potential of mobile computing technology to improve chronic disease self-management, quality of life, and health outcomes of older adults to prevent or alleviate future disabilities. Thus, the study will design, develop, and test an intervention to motivate and train seniors to use the technology, and conduct a trial to evaluate its effect. This innovative intervention will deploy young generation (age 18 to 30) volunteers to provide mobile technology training, access, and support to older adults (aged 55 and above) with type 2 diabetes in Taiwan. Hence, a secondary purpose of the study is to understand the effects of the volunteering experience on the values, characters, and health awareness in the young generation. This program, called the Intergenerational Mobile Technology Opportunities Program (IMTOP), will help older adults with type 2 diabetes acquire skills to use the Internet, World Wide Web (WWW), applications (or "apps"), and basic computing via mobile tablet devices. These skills will give participants access to resources and tools to improve health and mental health, reduce social isolation, and increase social engagement, as well as meet their individual life goals. The course will use young volunteers to deliver the tablet training. The training course will be offered as small-group sessions over an 8-week period (for up to 16 hours of training) at a hospital site, plus young volunteers' technical support and problem solving for up to 4 weeks after the training sessions are completed. Using college students to serve as volunteer trainers for teaching mobile technology, the research also aims to understand not only how the intergenerational interactions help the older adults learn the technology and improve health, but also how the tutoring experiences make impact on the young adults' skills and perspectives that will help them in their future careers and in the development of their characters. This research study will recruit three hundred fifty (350) patients from the collaborating hospitals, including two hundred fifty (250) patients from Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital and one hundred (100) patients from Hualien Tzu Chi Hospital. An estimate of 140 students in colleges and universities in Taiwan (100 volunteers in Taipei hospital and 40 volunteers in Hualien hospital) between the age of 18 and 30 will be recruited to serve as volunteer instructors to teach older adults to use tablets and to provide technical support services. Moreover, another group of 140 young adults, also age 18 to 30, will be recruited from universities to serve as the comparison group to the volunteers in intervention group. The course objectives are to guide older patients with Type 2 diabetes to use technology to obtain diabetes-related medical information, learn to record and control their physiological data via technology, promote intergenerational communication, enhance the convenience in life, and improve social life and mental health through technology tools such as the Internet, social media, online health education resources, instructional videos and so on. It is hoped to further slow down degradation, promote health and prolong life.

Conditions

• Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Intergenerational Mobile Technology Opportunities Program

The themes of the 8-week training session are designed based on the objectives of IMTOP: 1) teach skills of tablet use and diabetes self-management behavior tracking app, 2) introduce online community communication to decrease social isolation and obtain social support from family and friends, young volunteers, health care providers, and diabetes peers who have similar condition/interest/ or disease), 3) teach diabetes self-management knowledge and skills based on the evidence-based Chronic Disease Self-Management Program; and 4) teach mobile technology application to healthcare access and daily needs (i.e., online appointment, online refill, appointment reminder, online health information, online training videos, and virtual classes such as e-newspaper, e-books, related sites, apps).

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Taipei Fubon Bank Charity Foundation

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• Taichung Tzu Chi Hospital

  collaborator OTHER

• Hualien Tzu Chi General Hospital

  collaborator OTHER

• University of Southern California

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Shinyi Wu, PhD · University of Southern California

Study Design

Allocation

NON_RANDOMIZED

Purpose

HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

55 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2015-10-31

Primary Completion

2017-05-31

Completion

2019-04-30

Countries

• Taiwan

Study Locations