Richard Holden
Associate ProfessorDepartment of Medicine; Center for Health Innovation and Implementation Science (CTSI); IU Center for Aging Research (Regenstrief Institute); Center for Biomedical Informatics (Regenstrief Institute)
ude[dot]ui[at]nedlohjr
Technology for Prevention and Care of Dementia and other Chronic Diseases
My portfolio of applied and translational research develops and evaluates technologies and other solutions designed to improve health and healthcare. My research process begins by studying the problem and existing solutions, which often involves mixed method field research; I have studied systems and processes across settings including the emergency room, pediatric and adult hospitals, inpatient pharmacy, hospital IT departments, primary and specialty outpatient care clinics, and community-based population health management programs. Over the last decade I have focused on the "work" of patients and have led studies with hundreds of patients and their family caregivers. From these studies, I typically derive products such as personas, use-case scenarios, workflow diagrams (journey maps), work system analyses, and cognitive task analyses. These products facilitate the next step in my process, the design and development of new interventions. I apply the principles of user-centered design, which I have adapted for aging, chronically ill, and cognitively impaired populations. Several of my studies have implemented "participatory design," in which the end-user participates in the design process as a co-designer (as opposed to as the study subject). The last step is evaluation; I lead evaluation studies ranging from expert usability inspections to formal usability and acceptance testing with end-users to clinical trials to evaluate intervention efficacy and safety. All this work requires multi- and transdisciplinary collaborations and in any given project I collaborate with a team representing expertise in clinical care (physicians, pharmacists, nurses), social and health science (psychology, sociology, public health), and STEM (industrial engineering, informatics). The end goal of my work is to improve human health and aging by creating interventions that are evidence-based, human-centered, and pass rigorous evaluation.