Vision

Vision Statement and Long-Term Goals

Vision: A world free of chronic diseases

Long-term goal: To improve the health outcomes and quality of life among older adults with multiple chronic conditions (MCC) using assistive technology.

Main research concepts:

  • Older adults with multiple physical and cognitive chronic conditions and their caregivers
  • Self-management and self-management support
  • Socially assistive robots
  • Mobile health application

Overview of Research and Team Collaboration

Research questions:

  1. What are the most important factors affecting self-management of MCC among older adults?
  2. How will assistive technology support self-management of MCC among older adults?
  3. How can older adults easily and sustainably adopt assistive technology to self-manage their health conditions?

These research questions are to understand how assistive technology helps older adults with MCC improve their health and quality of life. Our team also focuses on older adults with chronic cognitive conditions from the perspective of how assistive technology may help health professionals and caregivers support their patients’ self-management.

Specifics in collaboration and research: We are in the beginning stage as a team. Thus, we have focused on fostering trust and developing a shared goal to build a concrete collaborative team in Year 1. We have defined each member’s roles and responsibilities as follows:

  • Hyunkyoung Oh, Leader – building sustainable and fair working environment and resolving conflicts.
  • Yura Lee, Reporter/recorder – recording, presenting, and preparing team progress and final reports.
  • Wonchan Choi, Data manager – managing data generated from team projects and team communication channels (e.g., shared mailbox, team website).
  • Zhi Zheng, Organizer – scheduling activities and managing submission for publication and grants.
  • JinsungWang, Mentor/Reviewer – mentoring young investigators (i.e., other team members), and reviewing/editing research reports, papers and proposals.

We have launched three projects to obtain preliminary data for publications and research funds, which are the foundation to achieve our long-term goal. We expect to collect primary data by the end of Year 1 and report our preliminary findings to relevant conferences and journals as a team in Year 2. We as a team have been actively seeking external research funds since the beginning of our collaboration.