InfoSAGE Information Sharing Across Generation and Environments

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): We propose to study the information needs of elders and their adult children who are involved in their care by building a "living laboratory" which we are calling InfoSAGE (Information Sharing Across Generations and Environments). InfoSAGE will allow us to study real-life situations of elders and the challenges for families of communicating, coordinating, and collaborating with complex and costly care environments. Elderly patients may face diminishing cognitive function and may need to transfer aspects of control of their personal health information and decision making to one or more family members. We hypothesize that these elders will still want to retain governance over some of their healthcare information and decision-making, but gradually transition to a shared model. Our goal is gain an understanding of the healthcare information 'ecosystem' that can support the special needs of the independent elder, yet also be capable of supporting an incremental transition to shared management of information, decision making and communication. We will utilize the senior care system at Hebrew Senior Life to longitudinally study patient and family collaborative interactions and information management behaviors in the context of real healthcare decision- making and care tasks. We will evaluate the extent to which InfoSAGE improves the patient's and family's sense of awareness and control over long term care plans as well as optimizes overall resource utilization around care transitions. The outcome of this work will be a robust model of the healthcare information management infrastructure needed to meet the growing needs of elders, their adult children and other caretakers.