This project aims to design and implement a digital platform for research on and support of emotional wellbeing of older people (>50) impacted by COVID-19 social distancing[1].

Impact:

We will apply our team’s ongoing research on integrating technologies within social systems to:

-Contribute to understandings of the lived experience of the pandemic among older people and their support networks.

-Increase resilience of these networks through design/development of a digital platform which enables the recording, sharing, and analysing of wellbeing within an adaptive, secure, and privacy-respecting environment.

Critical Data And Resources:

-Multimethod datasets on lived experiences of social distancing, and relationships between network compositions and outcomes, digital engagement, and wellbeing.

-Methods for implementing adaptive and secure software platforms for user-controlled social support.

Our work will address these research questions directed at mitigating impacts on older people socially distanced due to COVID-19:

-What are benefits and shortcomings of digitally recording, sharing, and analysing emotion and wellbeing states?

-How can a digital platform be designed to facilitate trustworthy and engaging social support to encourage and maintain self-collection of data?

-What are real-time relationships between social interactions, loneliness, and emotion regulation?

-How can we predict trends and trigger system adaptivity to foster interpersonal engagement and thereby reduce loneliness?

This project seeks to contribute to understanding of and response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts due to unprecedented social distancing, by digitally facilitating support/carer interactions and gathering data to assist personalized interventions and policy.

[1]https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanpsy/PIIS2215-0366(20)30168-1.pdf