Decision support for caregivers through embedded capture and access

The care of individuals with concerns about development, health, and wellness is often a difficult, complicated task and may rely on a team of diverse caregivers. There are many decisions that caregivers must make to help ensure that the best care and health monitoring are administered. For my dissertation work, I have explored the use of embedded capture and access to support decision-making for caregivers. Embedded capture and access integrates simple and unobtrusive capture and useful access, including trending information and rich data, into existing work practices. I hypothesized that this technology encourages more frequent access to evidence, increased collaboration amongst caregivers, and decisions made with higher confidence. I have explored this technology through real-world deployments of new embedded capture and access applications in two domains. For the first domain, I have developed two applications to support decision-making for caregivers administering therapy to children with autism. The first application, Abaris, supports therapists working with a single child in a home setting, and the second application, Abaris for Schools, extends the ideas of Abaris for use in a school setting for many teachers working with multiple children. The second domain I have explored is decision-making for parents of newborn children. In particular, I developed and evaluated embedded capture and access technology to support parents, pediatricians, and secondary childcare providers in making decisions about whether a child’s development is progressing normally in order to promote the earlier detection of developmental delays.