Over the past three months, I have primarily conducted literature research on the overall topic of First Aid Assistance for Chronic Diseases. During this process, this topic has evolved in diverging and converging research phases, becoming more and more detailed over time. At this point I would like to briefly recapitulate what I have learned so far.
Research development
With the announcement of my research topic, I got to know better what first aid and the chain of survival means. I also got a great impression of what interactive first aid applications exist and what areas they cover.
In the beginning, I started to keep the topic very rough, which allowed me to discover things. To understand what first aid consists of, I drew a bigger picture of the different aspects. I also had a first idea of what types of chronic diseases could be considered. Very early on, I realized that I was interested in the specific context of sudden emergencies.
As I delved deeper into the variety of chronic diseases, I discovered types that were suitable and less suitable for my research. I also learned the difference between diseases, symptoms and disease events. The candidates were cardiac arrhythmia, diabetes and epilepsy. What makes epilepsy different from the others is that not every seizure is life threatening. I found this interesting. That is why I decided to pursue this path in my research.
I looked deeper into epilepsy first aid and found a general approach that can be applied to any type of epileptic seizure: Get the person into a safe state and recognize when it is time to call an ambulance. So there is a difficult decision-making process involved.
I was lucky enough to find this very valuable scientific article that describes the current state of research for my central research question: How can we use technology to support first aid? This helped me immensely to understand the criteria that need to be considered, the pain points of people with epilepsy and their families, and recommendations for future technologies to address these issues.
In my search for tools and methods as a starting point for project work, I came across this scientific paper explaining and categorizing different design approaches. It highlighted the possibilities and limitations of design in the strict field of healthcare, which helped me to evaluate where to place a potential project.
Finally, I tried to find out more about untrained first responders who have experience helping a person with epilepsy. This turned out to be very difficult, so I tried to make assumptions about their perspective by studying seizure first aid stories. If further research on this is unsuccessful, I would need to gather information using other (empirical) methods.
Outlook
From this point of research, the next steps would include the following:
- Gain greater insight for all stakeholders through additional (user research) methods
- Further evaluate existing solutions
- Consolidate insights, findings and other information into an initial concept
