Socio-technical challenges in implementation of monitoring technologies in elderly care

Abstract

Although new monitoring technologies (MT) supporting aging in place are continuously developed and introduced on the market, attempts to implement these technologies as an integrated part of elderly care often fail. According to the literature, the reason for that may be the prevailing technical focus applied during development and implementation of monitoring technologies in real settings. The aim of this paper was to investigate the socio-technical challenges that arise during implementation of monitoring technologies in elderly care. We used a qualitative case study and semi-structured interviews to investigate socio-technical (S/T) challenges in implementation of monitoring technologies generally and social alarms especially. Based on our findings we suggest a framework for classification of S/T challenges arising during implementation of monitoring technologies in elderly care and in this way this paper contributes to a better understanding of these challenges.