Resumen de Introduçao de ferramentas multimédia num contexto de terapia: estudio exploratório aplicado à terapia de pacientes esquizofrénicos
Carla Sofia Costa Freire
Nowadays, Information and Communication Technologies and Internet play an important role supporting everyday objectives. The speed of tasks performance, the easy access to all kind of information and the possibility of having a synchronous and asynchronous communication at any time and place, are some of the advantages that technologies provide us in everyday activities. In fact, these days, it¿s almost unthinkable for a company or institution not making to use these technologies, because they are increasingly present, allowing a fast performance of administrative tasks, product or service promotion in WEB, eLearning or blended-learning, etc. However, it still exist some resistance to technology. Health is a field where technology is constantly used when referring to equipment (hardware) to assist medical exams, such as ultrasounds, electrocardiograms, electroencephalograms, magnetic resonance imaging, and others. Yet, regarding the use of software and systems applied to therapies, this is one of the sectors that use less technology, especially when referring the mental health sector. Given the several advantages that technology provides, it¿s important to find out the technology potential users¿ reactions, as well as the factors that affect their behavior and the reasons that slow down the technology expansion, in mental health field. The work presented in this thesis is about the introduction of multimedia tools in schizophrenic patient¿s therapy, having as the main goal the exploratory study of technology acceptance in a therapy context of schizophrenic cognitive rehabilitation. In order to achieve the main goal and to know the context of this work, it was made a theoretical study about mental health, particularly about schizophrenia, technology use, where it is referred the Human-Computer Interaction, health technologies and technology acceptance and adoption. The theoretical study has allowed the empirical work development, resulting in the design and development of a multimedia system for cognitive rehabilitation of schizophrenic patients ¿ eSchi System ¿ and in two different micro-studies that aimed to complement information: (1) Case study of technology acceptance (eSchi system) by schizophrenic patients; (2) a survey applied to acceptance technology experts, related to the relevance of creating a general technology model applied to therapies. The results of the theoretical study suggest the need of organization and generalization health technology concepts, given the variety of existing concepts without clear and universal definition. About the empirical study it¿s important to focus: the patient¿s good receptivity to eSchi system, although it was noticed some difficulty in generalizing activities to different types of schizophrenia; the difficulties to access real clinical contexts; and the significance to create an eTherapy model that could be applied to different scenarios. Given the exploratory nature of this work, many questions have been raised leading to new research proposals, such as the technology acceptance study applied to different users, or the study of the factors that cause resistance to the implementation os technology in health sector.
