Exploring users' perspectives on the ethical implications of AAL technologies use in the continuum of care

Ethical AAL

TThis Mitacs-funded (IT24763) postdoctoral research fellowship will further explore ethical, security, and privacy challenges in AAL technology use. The research team will interview users who fit the following recruitment criteria, i.e., they will be selected from the different domains on the continuum of care (home care, independent living, or retirement homes) with the help of expert advisors.

Continnum of care

(1) Expert advisors will currently be working for an organization responsible for community health or homecare and/or

(2) Deliver patient care or coordinate the delivery of patient care in the community and

(3) Be familiar with the ethics of AAL technologies deployment in these domains.

Semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and in-depth Interviews will be conducted with the informed consent of research participants and will be audio-recorded and transcribed using REV (www.rev.com). The transcripts will be coded using NVIVO 12 Pro. The results will be analyzed using thematic analysis following an inductive method (Denzin & Lincoln, 2013), where themes will be generated based on the coded data. All data collection through interviews and focus groups on this project will follow a similar research methodology. The findings from this phase of the project will be used further to validate the findings of our systematic literature review and to help inform, develop, and update the Canadian Standards Association's standards and guidelines on the ethical deployment/implementation of AAL technologies.