Medical and para-medical personnel’ perspectives on home health care technology

Abstract

User-based research is strongly recommended in design for older adults. The aim of this paper is to focus the attention on the poorly explored role of medical and para-medical personnel’s perspective on home health care technologies using data that have been gained during the “Active Ageing At Home” (AA@H) project. A focus group was organized at the National Institute of Health & Science on Ageing (INRCA) in Italy. Results demonstrate that several challenges deserve a stronger effort by the whole research sector on ageing and technology: (1) a leading role of the participatory design process; (2) the assessment of the added value of health technologies through robust methods; (3) the definition of an unique identity and well established practices among disciplines; (4) the creation of favorable prerequisites and conditions to the technology uptake.