Do you use telecare equipment? Opinions wanted

[Matt Hill]

Does the person you care for use telecare equipment at home? Telecare includes personal alarms, household sensors, and falls detectors.

If you have experience of this equipment, researchers from the Universities of Leeds and Oxford would like to hear from you. A number of telephone-based group-interviews will take place in July / August 2012. They are hoping to attract between 6 and 8 carers to each session, to engage in discussion about experiences with telecare. They will offer a gift of £20 to each carer who takes part.

The study is about how people in need of care and their carers make use of telecare equipment, what the issues are, how it helps, and what difficulties it presents. If you think you can talk about these experiences, please contact the Leeds University administrative team on:

Tel: 0113 343 5003
Email: CIRCLEadmin@leeds.ac.uk

Carers UK is not involved in this research but we have a good research relationship with the University of Leeds, and we're interested in how telecare can support carers, so that's why we're posting about this project.

Thanks

Matt

[Scally]

Just bought my son an iPhone with his personal budget so he can become more independent, does that qualify? He likes the satnav/ navigation functions, the diary, internet access, and lots more apps: not bad for just over £1 a day. I think the future of telecare is seamless merging with mainstream IT equipment and services, not divergence into a disabled/caring ghetto, but I may be wrong.

[Scally]

Actually the "todays weather" has proven to be one of the most popular functions of the iPhone, because my son can now decide what clothing to wear when he heads off to college or on one of his adventures, sure in the knowledge that he is a lot less likely to be soaked by an unexpected change in the weather. Its all about enhancing independence, isnt it, and it saves me having to look it up for him.

[Scally]

ABSTRACT
Home care is on the rise, and its delivery is increasingly reliant on an expanding variety of health technologies ranging from computers to telephone “health apps” to social robots. These technologies are most often predicated on expectations that people in their homes (1) can actively interact with these technologies and (2) are willing to submit to the action of the technology in their home. Our purpose is to use an “ability expectations” lens to bring together, and provide some synthesis of, the types of utility and disadvantages that can arise for people with disabilities in relation to home care technology development and use. We searched the academic databases Scopus, Web of Science, EBSCO ALL, IEEE Xplore, and Compendex to collect articles that had the term “home care technology” in the abstract or as a topic (in the case of Web of Science). We also used our background knowledge and related academic literature pertaining to self-diagnosis, health monitoring, companionship, health information gathering, and care. We examined background articles and articles collected through our home care technology search in terms of ability expectations assumed in the presentation of home care technologies, or discussed in relation to home care technologies. While advances in health care support are made possible through emerging technologies, we urge critical examination of such technologies in terms of implications for the rights and dignity of people with diverse abilities. Specifically, we see potential for technologies to result in new forms of exclusion and powerlessness. Ableism influences choices made by funders, policy makers, and the public in the development and use of home health technologies and impacts how people with disabilities are served and how useful health support technologies will be for them. We urge continued critical examination of technology development and use according to ability expectations, and we recommend increasing incorporation of participatory design processes to counteract potential for health support technology to render people with disabilities technologically excluded and powerless.

Home Care Technology Through an Ability Expectation Lens

Gregor Wolbring*, PhD; Bonnie Lashewicz*, PhD

Community Rehabilitation and Disability Studies, Community Health Sciences, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada
http://www.jmir.org/2014/6/e155/

[Simon_1501]

Is this research going on?