Sharing indirect biofeedback information for mutual acceptance

Abstract

This paper proposes a model of mutual acceptance between a patient, his/her family members and medical staff by sharing information through indirect biofeedback. For upcoming a so-called super aging society, it has been becoming a serious problem how effective and high-quality care support for aged persons could be achieved in Japan. Here we focus on psychological aspect of this problem. That is, it would be a possible way to tackle the problem if an aged patient, his/her family members and medical staff could deepen their mutual understanding and mutual acceptance by sharing indirect biofeedback information of the patient. This paper describes and discusses two mechanisms; indirect biofeedback of a user’s sleep state based on analysis and measurement of his/her sleep data, and sharing information of his/her indirect biofeedback with a plant-type indicator through experiments. We conducted an experiment using the elderly people in the facility and healthy people. The participants see the virtual plants which is visualized their own sleep state and the participants try to do mutual understanding and mutual acceptance. We evaluated the measured data as well as the answers to a questionnaire filled out before and after the experiment. The results indicated that the study participants could properly promote mutual understanding and mutual acceptance by using proposed system.