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Online care for the elderly
Posted: November 30, 2010
A touch-screen and a video camera can become new elements of future elderly care. The IT company KMD has in collaboration with four municipalities agreed to initiate a project in which elderly citizens will get a number of care services delivered via video contact over the internet rather than by physical visits.
The background of the new technology is for instance that municipal employees spend a lot of time and resources on simple transportation to and from the elderly. This results in less time for the individual citizens. The new digital solution can both help to provide better service to the citizens and release some resources in the municipalities.
Online contact can improve service
The solution is an online portal where the elderly through a touch-screen and a video camera can see and talk with municipal employees as well as family and friends. As a starting point, 15-20 care services in home care and rehabilitation, which today are delivered at the citizen’s home, can be delivered digitally. The types of services that can be fully or partly delivered as digital service include:
Advice provided by the home help and home care, rehabilitation, reminders, information materials about meal planning, transportation and local events. Reporting of health measurements, emergency contact and agreed monitoring.
- The ambition with Online Care is to increase the citizen’s safety, health and quality of life while the municipals and other relevant actors at the same time change working procedures and save resources, says Lars Monrad-Gylling, CEO of KMD and continues;
- Online care is an IT solution, which is based on that face-to-face communication does not have to be physical. We believe that quick and easier contact can help the citizens become more self-reliant, receive faster and more qualified guidance and achieve greater safety and less loneliness, Lars Monrad-Gylling.
Another project that addresses the issue of loneliness and isolation among elderly people is Express to Connect, which is co-funded by the European Ambient Assisted Living Joint Programme. The project started in the beginning of 2010 with different partners such as Øresund IT. The overall objective for the project is to develop, test and deploy a web service where elderly can share their memories with their family and other elderly. During 2011 and 2012, elderly people will have the opportunity to test the service as part of their everyday lives.
Digitalization of welfare
- The public sector has for many years successfully digitized much of the administrative area, but there are big gains to widen the scope even more and digitize welfare areas such as care services, schools and health, explains Lars Monrad-Gylling.
He predicts that we face entirely new ways of doing things. - The welfare debate has traditionally been on how the pie is shared out, but we believe that technology can help streamline while the citizens will experiencing an improved level of service. We also see a tendency that the public sector really is about to discover the so-called welfare technology, says Lars Monrad-Gylling.
The potential savings
With the services contained in the Online Care project, resources equivalent to 470 full-time positions can be released nationwide. This is equivalent to a release of 186 million annually. But KMD believes that the potential of a full rollout includes at least 10% of care visits conducted in Danish municipalities.
In the longer term the use of Online Care can naturally expand to areas such as psychiatry, prevention, monitoring of chronic patients, antenatal and health care.
Source: KMD and Øresund IT
