• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.201-209
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• 2012

This study was conducted in order to empirically analyze factors affecting the quality of life in the elder resulting from the use of elderly leisure facilities in the community. For this purpose, we surveyed the elder using the senior health town of Gwang-ju Metropolitan City to see whether the quality of life in the elder is influenced by factors such as facilities' environment within the health town, the capacity for the staff and instructors, and the elders' satisfaction with programs. The results of this study are expected to provide practical solutions for enhancing the quality of life in senior users. The survey was performed with 1,038 elders aged over 60 who were using the senior health town of Gwang-ju Metropolitan City by using a self-administered questionnaire and being interviewed with surveyors. The period of the survey was from the 10th to 15th of December, 2010. According to the results of this study, variables affecting the elders' quality of life were academic qualification (B= .074, p<0.05), instructors satisfaction (B=.172, p<0.001), staff satisfaction (B=.104, p<0.01), and facilities and environment satisfaction (B=.217, p<0.001). That is, the lower academic background they have, the higher instructors', staff's, facilities and environment's satisfaction are, the quality of life in the elder was positively affected. In particular, facilities and environment's satisfaction show a relatively high effect and this suggests the necessity to modernize cultural and leisurely facilities in community for senior citizens and create pleasant environment in order to improve the quality of life in the elder.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.90-96
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• 2010

We are stepping into so called "aged society" stage, as the mature people account for 7% of the population by UN's standard yardstick. The goal of this research is to provide the fundamental source in producing ecological lifestyle uniforms of health and substantiality: LOHAS which are relevant to high performance and healthy body and take things like architecture, driving, surroundings, and recycling as main factors. the results of study were as follows: Therefore we can predict, through exerting researches about consumer's usage and preference of uniforms, that the garment business will be upgraded to the medical welfare and urban life style business level. All of the silver town resident we researched wear silver town uniforms, and the uniforms were chosen by the owner and operator. This research was processed through the survey of supervisors who were employed in senior residences. 66% of elderly changed their clothes for laundary every 2 days, The timing of removal of the old uniform was that 17% was less than 1 years, consideration of buying silver-town uniforms were consider materials, design, laundary, convenience of administration, durability, color, cost.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.407-422
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• 2014

Objective: The purpose of the study is to develop quantitative usability evaluation criteria for senior-friendly autonomous transportation robot. Background: The Republic of Korea has become the most rapidly aging society, and is anticipated to enter the post-aged society in 2026. To raise the quality of life of a senior with limited mobility and to reduce the burden of caregivers, many high-tech assistive products with information technologies are developed nowadays. The senior-friendly autonomous transportation robot is one person robot vehicle to move a senior to the destination for hospitals, nursing homes or silver town complex. With built-in navigation system and environmental monitoring censors, it automatically seeks the path to the destination and avoids collision to obstacles and pedestrians on the way. Due to the early stage of the product, few usability studies in this field have been done, mostly on general service robots to assist seniors, power wheelchairs and delivery robots. ISO and KS standards for the service robots are focused on safety. Method: Based on the reference usability index, the early draft of the usability evaluation questionnaires was developed. After small group tests and interviews, the experts modified the initial draft to the Usability Evaluation Criteria for Senior-Friendly Autonomous Transportation Robot (UEC-SFATR). Result: UEC-SFATR consisted of 4 subscales - Safety, Controllability, Efficiency and Satisfaction. All of the 4 subscales of UEC-SFATR were passed the reliability criteria by 4 groups of seniors, divided by gender and familiarity of smart-devices. Conclusion: UEC-SFATR covers wider area of user experiences of the SFATR and is a good measurement tool to help both the users and developers of the robot. Application: This study provides guide to the future product development and product competitiveness evaluation by quantifying user experiences for the SFATR.

• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.23-41
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to explore social supports for elderly housing and their residential lives in small cities along rural counties of the United States and Canada, and suggest future implications for age-concentrated rural villages in Korea. In this study, five small and medium cities in non-metropolitan counties of California and Ontario province were visited and elderly residents and service experts were interviewed about their perceptions of community integrated social support networks for senior residences. The senior housing complexes were built due to influx of both metropolitan and rural residents seeking warm localities, traffic connections, business purposes in active production areas. and leisure attractions. There are five main social support networks for senior housing issues in these areas. First, the areas are claimed for senior zones and accordingly health industries are encouraged by local authorities. Second, the community is homogeneously constructed as a senior friendly environment and include features such as an RV park and mobile cottages. Third, senior-helping seniors are offered active work through golf-cluster active retirement communities. Fourth, traditional theme production camps are mobilized by the elderly workers. Lastly, an information system is maintained for screening volunteers and for senior abuse prevention. On the other hand, residential lives are occasionally negatively influenced by unbalanced concentrations of elderly facilities such as nursing stations and funeral homes. For the future of Korean rural elderly policies, suggestions are made as follows: first, an integrated urban and rural township that contains attractive places for early retiring people who seek a warm atmosphere in later life needs to be constructed. Second, an integrated model retirement village of urban and rural retirement life needs to be initiated as a measure of evaluating the adaptation process of movers in senior concentrated zones. Third, a cooperation system among governmental ministries needs to be formed with the long- term goal of establishing a traditional rural town of independent housing districts and medical facilities in rural areas. Fourth, productive and active lifestyles need to be maintained as the local community and government develop successful retirement rural villages, by limiting the expansion of nursing related facilities. Finally, generation integrated visiting welfare programs and services need to be further developed for the housing areas especially in the winter, when social integration and activity are relatively low.

• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.24 no.4 s.82
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• pp.127-139
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• 2006

The purpose of this research was to find out relation between the attitudes toward work and leisure in later life and intention to move to senior community available to work among 50's in Seoul, Incheon, and Kyunggido. The same research questions would be revealed as the previous one done by Cho & Cho(2006). The data were the part of the survey collected from 556 respondents with questionnaire during November, 2002 by the Hong's research team(2004). The results of this study showed that most respondents were somewhat actively preparing toward work in later life and the level of preparation differed by the individual characteristics such as age, health and occupation. They preferred various work items specially managing facility center, raising animals and plants, and managing educating center, which were different from what current elderly workers were mainly involved in. Similarly to the work, most respondents cared for the kind of leisure activities to continue and saved money for the leisure expenses in later life. The better the economic conditions, the more actively prepared for leisure in later life. They were strongly expected to participate in public leisure facilities and programs for the elderly as a user, volunteer, and/or activist. Over two thirds of the respondents preferred to work and live together in later life and over two out of five had intention to move to the senior community available to work. The more active in work and/or leisure in later life, the higher intention to work together and/or to move to the community. Those results generally supported the previous research showed that the needs of work and leisure in later life would be increased and varied, therefor housing for the elderly should considered work space and program as well as leisure. The further study was suggested to focus on the potential and current residents in the sample case of the comprehensive welfare town for the elderly by local administration.

• Journal of Korean Physical Therapy Science
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.61-69
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• 2008

Background: This article reviewed the current status of home-based physical therapy infrastructure in long term care insurance and then solved the problem. Method: We used two forms of data that were acquired from ⅰ) the Ministry of Health & Welfare and the Family and National Health Insurance Corporation, ⅱ) a home-visiting health care program, and ⅲ) evaluation data from the Korea Health Industry Development Institute. The home-based physical therapy program was then analyzed. Results: The role and concept of home-based physical therapy was not clearly established. There were few home-based physical therapy programs in the community. The manpower of home-based physical therapists in the home-visiting health care program was very low. The role between home-visiting nurses (caregivers) and home-based physical therapists was mixed. Research and promotion regarding home-based physical therapy was poor. Conclusion: To establish a system of legal, long-term care insurance, we must increase the manpower of home-based physical therapists and the amount of research pertaining to the demand for home-based physical therapy.

• Journal of the Korean housing association
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.11-22
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• 2007

The purpose of this study is to propose prototypical plans for a dwelling unit applying the concepts of 'open housing' and 'aging in place' for senior citizens living in cities focusing on specific life patterns with chronic disease. Especially, a unit was designed for diabetes patients because diabetes, a representative disease of elderly people, often accompanies complications such as arthritis and Alzheimer disease. A unit design suitable for the convenient life of the elderly people with diabetes will provide a guideline for the similar unit designs of the senior citizens with other diseases. In this study, three types of unit plan are proposed. A-type plan is for type-1 diabetes patients, B-type alt.1 for the independent seniors of type-2 diabetes patients, and B-type alt.2 for the dependant seniors of type-2 diabetes patients. And a support design for a unit plan with the exclusive area of $60\;m^2$ is proposed. The same support design is used for all three unit types. Although the locations of bathroom and storage room are fixed and the location of the kitchen is changeable only in wet-zone. In conclusion, senior residents with diabetes can choose one of three unit types before occupation and the chosen unit type can be renovated by replacing infill systems as the health condition or life style changes.

• Journal of Korean Physical Therapy Science
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.43-53
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• 2009

Background: The purpose of this study was to investigate the perception of home care team's home based physical therapy in public health center Method: We surveyed 11 questionnaires for hone care team in health center from 1st to 30th, November in 2008. Results: The person who recognized the exclusion fact of home-based physical therapy in long term care insurance was 64.2% in whole 109 people. About necessity of home-based physical therapy, "absolutely necessary" as the person answer was 43.1%. Home-based physical therapy in the insurance must come to be provided with a precedence was 81.3%. About starting time of hereafter home-based physical therapy "after 1 years" the opinion which was 60.7%. Opinion about operation institution of home-based physical therapy "the pubic hospital or health center" was 52.3%. In composition form of the home-based physical therapy team "with the physical therapist and occupation therapist come together" was investigated with 37.4%. Conclusion: As long term care insurance will be developed, discussion about quality- of-service must be continuous and depth. Relates hereupon, the academic, researchers, and the persons concerned must consider the best quality of life improvement of the citizen and prepare the ground which systemic, rational, and actual on starting of home-based physical therapy in long term care insurance.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.619-625
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• 2007

As low power, low cost wireless communication technology like Bluetooth, Zigbee, RFID has been put to practical use together with the wellbeing trend, the concern about ubiquitous health care has been greatly increased and u-Health is becoming one of the most important application in the sensor network field. Especially, development of the medical services to be able to cope with a state of emergency for solitary senior citizens and the aged in silver town is very meaningful itself and their needs are also expected to continuously increase with a rapid increase in an aging population. In this paper we demonstrate the feasibility of extracting accurate heart rate variability (HRV) measurements from photoelectric plethysmography(PPG) signals gathered by a ring type pulse oximeter sensor attached to the finger. For this, we made 2 types of ring sensor, that is reflective and pervious type, and developed the remote monitoring system which is able to collect HR data from ring sensor, analyze and cope with a state of emergency.

• The Journal of Korean Physical Therapy
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.73-81
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• 2010

Purpose: The purpose of this study was (1) to examine the effects of a Health Promotion Exercise Program (HPEP) on functional improvement, physical strength (PS) and muscle activation (MA), and the interactive influence with activities of daily living (ADL) and instrumental activities of daily living (IDAL) in the elderly, and (2) to develop and provide a HPEP for the elderly in order to prevent declines and impairments in integrated nerve function and physical capacity. Methods: Our study included relatively healthy elderly people aged 65 years or older. The experimental group, which was composed of 30 people, participated in a HPEP 50~60 minutes a day, 3 times a week, for a total of 12 weeks. Results: Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) validated the measurement models for MA, physical strength, ADL and IADL with a p<0.01. This confirms (i) the beneficial effects of the ADFP on their MA and PS, and (ii) that their improvement in PS, in turn, can improve their IADL. The results of this study indicates that ADFP can help Korean seniors 65 years or older improve their MA, PS, ADL, and IADL, and do so synergistically. Conclusion: An HPEP, when organized in such a way that the elderly can easily do it, and when exercise items and intensity can be programmed and reorganized accordingly to individual physical and physiological characteristics by presenting 5 categorized health domains of physical strength, may be useful, especially because it can be practiced irrespective of time and place.