Mid Sweden University

An identified global phenomenon is that, as the percentage of older adults increases, new challenges arise for medical care and rehabilitation. Several research studies have presented e-health as a promising concept to support the idea of independent living among patients with chronic diseases. The Mid Sweden region has a relatively old population and is a region where people live with long distances to the nearest hospital or health care centres. This study had a focus on defining testbed requirements for a technology enhanced stroke rehabilitation adapted to the specific region. The focal research question to answer in this study was: What are the requirements and their associated benefits and barriers of using technology-enhanced systems instead of traditional techniques for stroke rehabilitation in the Mid Sweden region? With Design Science as the overall research strategy, data was collected by semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders in the field of stroke rehabilitation. A deductive thematic analysis was conducted where important themes were grouped into the four main requirement categories of: Technical, Human-computer-interaction, Clinic and Sustainability. Beside the more specific requirements, an interesting finding was the division of stroke rehabilitation into the categories motoric, cognitive and speech rehabilitation; also, how technology enhanced solutions might be used in these categories. Each category has a potential for a successful use of technology enhanced services, but as the standard procedure in traditional stroke rehabilitation each patient needs a personalised treatment.