A governmental programme to support well-being, ageing and care at home with new technologies

Abstract

Purpose The better utilization of technology as the most promising solution for the sustainability challenge created by the ageing population has been stated (European Environment Agency 2020, Technology Advisory Board 2021). However, the challenges exist and they are related not only to the technologies utilized but to their impacts and integration into the user contexts, such as the services in which they are used. The programme, presented here introduces the services that needs to be reformed with technology for people living at home within home care. Method To introduce a governmental programme called ‘Smart Ageing and Care at Home’ (‘KATI’ for the Finnish Acronym) which advance and support the implementation of new technologies and digital services for well-being, ageing and care of older people at home in Finland. The programme itself consist of six regional projects across seven regions in Finland including municipalities or associations of municipalities, actors from both the third and private sectors, and universities as partners. The programme is coordinated by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), and the regional projects participate in systematic assessment realized in multi-perspective way. To assess the technologies and their impacts and integration into the user contexts, a shared guideline and platform was built for the regional projects to support them and to follow their own regional plans in systematic way. The platform provide a concise way to guide the regional projects to evaluate the impacts and to describe the adoption of technology solutions and operation models that the regional projects intergrate into their services. Results and Discussion At the moment while the governmental programme is halfway, the regional projects have carried out pilots and deployments of various technology devices, services and systems (e.g. monitoring technologies, solutions supporting social activity, and technologies for care professionals) together with independent older adults, homecare customers, family members and care professionals. They have also implemented technology to collect health-related data to be used in care services to support independent and safe living at home, and developed registries for devices and applications. Moreover, they have educated and trained homecare professionals for technology use, developed new care work roles, procurement processes and support services, and produced digital health technology assessments (Haverinen et al., 2019). Altogether, there are around one hundred technology solutions and operation models (e.g. video care and communication solutions, medicine dispension and monitoring devices, Artificial Intelligence services predicting changes in end-customers health and wellbeing, showrooms for seniors, 3D virtual training environments, and online shops to buy technologies for public services) that will be analysed to form a Finnish model of technology-supported ageing and care of older people at home. More information about the shared guideline and platform, which is made to support the regional projects in systematic way will be discussed at the conference. It includes objectives, information about technology solutions and operation models (e.g. information about their mechanisms and contexts to be used), evaluation methods, results, and ethics. Preliminary results of the adoption of technology solutions and operation models that the regional projects integrate into their services will also be presented. At the moment, 93 % out of the technology solutions and operation models that are planned to carry out are in progress.