PEACEanywhere – Implementing the vision for integrated health and social care

Abstract

Introduction: The ultimate Vision for Assisted Living is the provision of integrated health and social care, thus allowing health and social care professionals and carers to work in harmony to maximise the people's quality of life. PEACEanywhere one of the Projects under the auspices of the Technology Strategy Board Assisted Living Innovation Platform (ALIP2) sought to progress the vision towards implementation. The recently completed PEACEanywhere project built upon the outputs of the ALIP1 PEACE Project which by progressively incorporating functions proven in other domains aimed to provide a more seamless experience for Customer, Clinician and Social Care professionals and Informal carers alike when moving between the Telehealth, Telecare and Social and Community Care domains (which in England are administratively separated) to allow them to work in harmony to maximize the quality of life of older people. Docobo, a leading UK Telehealth System Provider was the lead partner in both the PEACE and PEACEanywhere Projects. Working together with collaborators HW Communications Ltd, Hywel Dda Local Health Board, Solent NHS Trust, Glenside Hospital and Age UK the aim was to build upon the product innovation developed within the PEACE Project to not only support the older or vulnerable person to allow them remain in their own homes for longer but also allow them greater independence by being able to take their Care Environment with them anytime, anywhere. This paper presents some of the innovations developed within the Project and the results of extensive focus group evaluation activity that guided the engineering design activity and also gave an indication of market potential. Key Aims and objectives: 1. The Docobo doc@HOME system is being used by many patients across the country. Development and testing of new variants and enhancements of the CarePortal, the primary user service delivery device of doc@HOME which was created within the PEACE Project was a key objective of the project. 2. A key activity was to address personal location in respect of supporting dementia sufferers and their carers and also potentially offering lone worker protection for community workers, resulting in the development of a Personal Location device able to operate both indoors and outdoors with a supporting location display within the Clinical System. 3. The care of people with neurological conditions was also addressed with work that was undertaken at Glenside Hospital. 4. Deployment of these technologies was seen as crucial and so a key part of the process was gaining opinions of the potential users of such technology and of people who were currently using earlier models to monitor their long term condition. The paper will discuss: * Major engineering upgrades taking place to improve the Customer Experience in response to feedback from the evaluations that have taken place over the course of the Project and the enhanced connectivity to give greater mobility * Indoor and outdoor location capabilities * New innovations for Telehealth and Assisted Living for addressing the field of rehabilitation for spinal and neurological injuries areas [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]