Technology has the potential to improve the independence and quality of life for older people in all aspects of life, including health, social interaction, recreation and employment. CREATE – the Center for Research and Education on Aging and Technology Enhancement – is a multidisciplinary Center funded by the National Institute on Aging, one of the National Institutes of Health, dedicated to meeting these goals.
CREATE represents a consortium of five universities, each with its own research team: Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM) in New York City, University of Miami (UM), Florida State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Sara Czaja, professor emeritus in UM’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and assistant professor at WCM, is the director of the overall center. Joseph Sharit, a research professor in UM’s Department of Industrial Engineering at the College of Engineering, has worked closely with Czaja over many years and is the leader of the UM CREATE site.
One of CREATE’s ongoing cross-site studies is the “PRISM 2.0: Field Trial.” PRISM 1.0 (Personal Reminder Information and Social Management), its predecessor, was built on an existing age-friendly PC-based computer application and was directed at socially-isolated older people living alone in the community.
“The 2.0 version of PRISM is a tablet-based system that was completely designed and developed within the CREATE laboratories utilizing rigorous user-centered design principles,” explains Sharit. “It is comprised of a large set of integrated features, in both English and Spanish, which are designed to support social interaction, information access, leisure activities, memory and skill building for older adults.” In both implementations of PRISM, the technologies (e.g., PCs and tablets) are provided to each participant. Free internet service is also provided through a partnership between CREATE and AT&T.
Other CREATE studies have emerged from the collaboration between the UM and WCM sites. For example, the “Technology Adoption” study uses a theory-based model to understand the decisions older adults make with respect to their willingness to adopt different types of technologies – such as websites, apps and devices – that are potentially capable of improving their independence and well-being.
A component of the “Technology Adoption” study is dedicated to investigating how much time older people would be willing to invest to obtain different levels of technological skill. “This has been a challenging problem in the scientific literature when realistic, as opposed to hypothetical laboratory-based scenarios, are considered,” says Sharit. “The findings of this study could have important implications for designers and marketers of technologies, especially considering that older people can contribute to a large share of the consumer market for these products.”
Sharit and Czaja are also collaborating on a study focused on understanding how older adults make complex medical decisions when relying on multiple sources of health information. This work extends their prior work in the area of healthcare, including telemedicine, health information seeking on the internet, and the design and evaluation of electronic patient portals. The study is expected to improve the design of decision support systems tailored for older users, which is important in light of current and future models of healthcare which presume that individuals will be taking a more active role in the management of their health.
Sharit and Czaja are also interested in the implications of technology in the workplace on the design of jobs for older workers. They organized a specialized conference in Miami in January of 2018, sponsored by CREATE, titled, “Current and Emerging Trends in Aging and Work,” whose content will be highlighted in a book they are editing that is slated to be published by Springer Publishing in 2019. To learn more about CREATE, please click here.
