Effects of a home care community-dwelling intervention on cognition, mental health, loneliness and quality of life in elder people: The VERA study

Palacios-Navarro, Guillermo (Universidad de Zaragoza) ; Santamaría, Rebeca ; del Río, David ; Ramos, Pedro (Universidad de Zaragoza) ; Gascón-Santos, Santiago (Universidad de Zaragoza)

Resumen: Background
New technologies can provide practical solutions that respond to the needs of the elderly, improving their quality of life and well-being. The aim of this research was to validate a multimodal approach based on a video call system, by comparing the scores of different clinically validated tests at baseline and at the end of the intervention.

Methods
A longitudinal study was conducted with 7 healthy participants aged 61 to 92 years over a 6-month period. To measure the effectiveness of the intervention, five variables were assessed: cognitive impairment, quality of life, general health, perceived loneliness, and depression. The following inventories were used as instruments to measure the aforementioned variables at baseline, mid intervention and after intervention: MEC-35 scale, Fototest, FUMAT scale, WHOQOL-BREF scale, Yesavage Geriatric Depression Scale, the Spanish adaptation of the Hamilton Scale, the revised ESTE scale and the Goldberg's GHQ28 Mental Health scale.

Result
The obtained results confirmed our hypothesis and the participants showed significant improvements after intervention in all the assessed domains except the cognitive domain, as expected. Results in FUMAT, WHOQOL-BREF, Yesavage Geriatric Depression, revised ESTE and the Goldberg's GHQ28 Mental Health scales were statistically significant (p < 0.05) and the effect sizes were large after intervention compare to baseline.

Conclusions
We have shown that the intervention has been effective in providing the participants with psychological and social benefits in the variables of quality of life, general health, perceived loneliness and depression. The high clinical relevance achieved from the results obtained makes the system a very suitable tool to promote the independence and well-being of people who receive community-dwelling home care.

Idioma: Inglés

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2024.105378

Año: 2024

Publicado en: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MEDICAL INFORMATICS 185 (2024), 105378 [7 pp.]
ISSN: 1386-5056

Factor impacto JCR: 4.1 (2024)

Categ. JCR: HEALTH CARE SCIENCES & SERVICES rank: 26 / 185 = 0.141 (2024) - Q1 - T1
Categ. JCR: MEDICAL INFORMATICS rank: 16 / 48 = 0.333 (2024) - Q2 - T2
Categ. JCR: COMPUTER SCIENCE, INFORMATION SYSTEMS rank: 77 / 258 = 0.298 (2024) - Q2 - T1

Factor impacto SCIMAGO: 1.189 - Health Informatics (Q1)

Financiación: info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/DGA/S69-23R

Tipo y forma: Article (Published version)

Área (Departamento): Área Tecnología Electrónica (Dpto. Ingeniería Electrón.Com.)
Área (Departamento): Área Teoría Señal y Comunicac. (Dpto. Ingeniería Electrón.Com.)
Área (Departamento): Área Person.Eval.Trat.Psicoló. (Dpto. Psicología y Sociología)