Telecare

Current state and future possibilities for ambient intelligence to support improvements in the quality of health and social care

by A. Niroshan Siriwardena

Emerging technologies for developing and improving patients' health experience

by A. Niroshan Siriwardena

Factors that promote or inhibit the implementation of e-health systems: an explanatory systematic review

by Frances Mair

Co-authored with: Carl May, Catherine O’Donnell, Tracy Finch, Frank Sullivan & Elizabeth Murray

Objective To systematically review the literature on the implementation of e-health to identify: (1) barriers and... more Objective To systematically review the literature on the implementation of e-health to identify: (1) barriers and facilitators to e-health implementation, and (2) outstanding gaps in research on the subject.
Methods MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PSYCINFO and the Cochrane Library were searched for reviews published between 1 January 1995 and 17 March 2009. Studies had to be systematic reviews, narrative reviews, qualitative metasyntheses or meta-ethnographies of e-health implementation. Abstracts and papers were double screened and data were extracted on country of origin; e-health domain; publication date; aims and methods; databases searched; inclusion and exclusion criteria and number of papers included. Data were analysed qualitatively using normalization process theory as an explanatory coding framework.
Findings Inclusion criteria were met by 37 papers; 20 had been published between 1995 and 2007 and 17 between 2008 and 2009. Methodological quality was poor: 19 papers did not specify the inclusion and exclusion criteria and 13 did not indicate the precise number of articles screened. The use of normalization process theory as a conceptual framework revealed that relatively little attention was paid to: (1) work directed at making sense of e-health systems, specifying their purposes and benefits, establishing their value to users and planning their implementation; (2) factors promoting or inhibiting engagement and participation; (3) effects on roles and responsibilities; (4) risk management, and (5) ways in which implementation processes might be reconfigured by user-produced knowledge.
Conclusion The published literature focused on organizational issues, neglecting the wider social framework that must be considered when introducing new technologies.

A Weight off my Mind: Exploring the impact and potential benefits of telecare for unpaid carers in Scotland

by Kara Jarrold

Designing with Care: The Future of Pervasive Healthcare

by Alan Card

Ingrid Mulder, Yvonne Schikhof, Martijn Vastenburg, Alan Card, Tory Dunn, Andreas Komninos, Marilyn McGee-Lennon, Mark Santcroos, Gabriele Tiotto, Mieke van Gils, Jan-Willem van 't Klooster, Annelies Veys, Mohammed Zarifi Eslami, "Designing with Care: The Future of Pervasive Healthcare," IEEE Pervasive Computing, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 85-88, Oct.-Dec. 2009, doi:10.1109/MPRV.2009.71

Humane care—which is an important design paradigm relevant for pervasive healthcare—means designing systems with care,... more Humane care—which is an important design paradigm relevant for pervasive healthcare—means designing systems with care, keeping in mind both users and other stakeholders. Understanding human values is a key factor in creating any successful healthcare application and is essential to avoid dehumanizing and stigmatizing users. By considering human values, designers and developers can create pervasive healthcare applications that better fit users' needs and desires. The Designing with Care 09 workshop aimed to bring together researchers, designers, and practitioners to share their experiences with incorporating values into the design of pervasive healthcare systems and to help understand the sensitive issues involved in designing for healthcare. Based on the findings from the workshop, the present state of the art is discussed, and a research agenda is presented.

Who is Telecaring Whom? The Total Social Organisation of Labour in the context of an EU Telecare Project

by Susan Baines

International conference at the Danish National Centre for Social Research, (SFI), Copenhagen, 21-23 June 2010
Transforming care 2010: Provision, quality and inequalities in late life

This paper is about innovations intended to help improve quality of life for older people, and reduce costs. ... more This paper is about innovations intended to help improve quality of life for older people, and reduce costs.  Such innovations are often referred to as ‘telecare’.  We draw upon evidence from a recently completed  project known as Older people’s e-services at home (OLDES), funded by the European Commission under the  Ambient Assisted Living priority  for the Ageing Society.  The eleven OLDES partners  developed and installed technologies offering  entertainment and health care for older people in their homes.  OLDES had two aspects: a feature called ‘tele-accompany’ involving a ‘digital companion’ to combat the isolation of older people living alone, and  health monitoring consisting of sensors for vital functions and movement detection.  The technologies were trialled in Prague (heath monitoring only)  in the Municipality of Bologna in the Italian region of Emila-Romagna (health and ‘tele-accompany’). The authors examine the new affordances or interconnections presented by their introduction, and what emerges from this for health and care providers, carers (paid and unpaid), voluntary organisations, and older people.  We propose that Glucksmann's framework of  the Total Social Organisation of Labour (TSOL) has potential as an  explanatory tool for telecare interventions  within a  mixed economy of care. We adapt TSOL to help make sense of changing forms of work and care associated with new technologies in the home, against a background of overlapping relationships between organisations, professionals, volunteers, carers, and older people themselves 

Restaurar el Orden del Telecuidado: Prácticas de Reparación y la Relación con los “Monstruos Organizacionales”

by Tomás Sánchez Criado

Pesquisas e Práticas Psicossociais 6(2): 319-337, agosto/dezembro 2011 [ISSN: 1809 - 8908]

El cuidado de las personas mayores ha cambiado enormemente en las sociedades postindustriales, como así atestigua el... more El cuidado de las personas mayores ha cambiado enormemente en las sociedades postindustriales, como así atestigua el creciente uso de tecnologías de la información para ello. De cara a observar qué manera de cuidar implican estas nuevas configuraciones, en este texto me acercaré etnográficamente a las prácticas de reparación que llevan a cabo los técnicos de un servicio de teleasistencia para personas mayores en Madrid (España). Siguiendo las recomendaciones de la “sociología de la desviación” y la “sociología de la reparación y el mantenimiento”, el interés de observar los modos en los que en estos servicios se lidia con diferentes “monstruos organizacionales” (aquellas configuraciones extrañas para los servicios) nos permitiría tener una definición práctica de cuáles son los órdenes que promueven de facto. El análisis del caso me permitirá detallar el importante trabajo de los técnicos como una constante “restauración” (por emplear un término usado recientemente por Latour) de un particular “arreglo del cuidado”, que definiré a partir de sus prácticas.

Telehealth in practice: using Normalisation Process Theory To Bridge The Translational Gap

by Frances Mair

Co-authored with Deborah Morrison.

Telecare and self-management: opportunity to change the paragdigm?

by Maartje Schermer

Jounral of Medical Ethics 2009

Telecare, the provision of care through remote interaction enabled by information and communication technology, is... more Telecare, the provision of care through remote interaction enabled by information and communication technology, is quickly developing. Integration with other technological developments is to be expected and will create systems that enable more intense, continuous and unobtrusive monitoring of health, and more personalised feedback and instructions. One of the goals of telecare is enhancing the independence and self-management of patients. In this article three degrees of self-management are described and a distinction is made between compliant and concordant forms of self-management. It is argued that telecare merely promotes forms of self-management in which compliance to medical instructions is central. Technological developments and normative policy considerations may enforce this trend to implement an interpretation of self-management in which compliance to a strict medical regime is prominent. Against this, a plea is made for developing telecare systems that incorporate concordant and collaborative forms of self-management, in which the patient’s own perspective is empowered

Purposeful Social Media as Support Platform

by Chris Norval

Telecare research: (Cosmo)politicizing methodology

by Daniel Lopez

Callén, B., Domènech, M., López, D. and Tirado, F. (2009). Telecare research: (Cosmo)politicizing methodology, ALTER - European Journal of Disability Research / Revue Européenne de Recherche sur le Handicap, 3(2), 110-122 

Growing attention is being paid to the increasing incidence of expert and lay citizen encounters in the processes of... more Growing attention is being paid to the increasing incidence of expert and lay citizen encounters in the processes of technological implementation. This poses the problem of the nature of participation, now a quite common topic in the field of science and technology studies. We offer firstly a brief review of the main issues regarding participation through deliberative participatory methods, pointing out their main strengths and weaknesses. Then, we propose Participatory Action Research as a way of improving and strengthening participation, especially in the field of telehealthcare. This is illustrated through an example extracted from our research with older people and telecare devices. Finally, participation is analysed as the critical issue in order to underpin the democratisation of research as a whole, offering the practice of cosmopolitics as a key to achieve such an end.

Asegurar el cuidado: Redes, Inmediatez y Autonomía en un Servicio de Teleasistencia Domiciliaria

by Daniel Lopez

PhD Thesis, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2009

Esta tesis es un estudio etnográfico sobre un servicio de teleasistencia domiciliaria en el que se analiza cómo se... more Esta tesis es un estudio etnográfico sobre un servicio de teleasistencia domiciliaria en el que se analiza cómo se organiza el cuidado a distancia e inmediato ante cualquier eventualidad, cómo se corporeiza y práctica la autonomía a través del uso de este servicio, y cómo el hogar y su forma de habitarlo se transforma con el uso de la teleasistencia. Estas tres preguntas tienen como objetivo final dilucidar qué desinstitucionalización se abre con la TAD. Concretamente, la tesis que sostiene el trabajo es que la desinstitucionalización puede interpretarse, a la luz de los resultado de la etnografía, como el paso de un disciplinamiento del cuidado a un aseguramiento del cuidado.

On inscriptions and ex-inscriptions: the production of immediacy in a home telecare service

by Daniel Lopez

López, D. & Domènech, M. (2008) On inscriptions and ex-inscriptions: the production of immediacy in a home telecare service. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26, pages 663-675

In this paper we explore from a topological perspective how immediate care is enacted in a home telecare service and... more In this paper we explore from a topological perspective how immediate care is enacted in a home telecare service and critically discuss how immediacy is defined. One approach is to conceive immediate care delivering as dependant on how disciplined the home telecare service inscriptions are and therefore on how uneventful and smooth the assistance is. However, this paper aims to put forward a more complex explanation by pointing out that immediate care delivering is produced not only by expelling indeterminacy but also by taking advantage of it. In order to do this we will use Bachelard’s concept of ex-inscription to shed light on the practices and techniques that transform events into opportunities (rather than obstacles) for delivering immediate care to home telecare service users.

Aplicación de la teoría del actor-red al análisis espacial de un servicio de teleasistencia domiciliaria

by Daniel Lopez

Publicado en AIBR. Revista de Antropología Iberoamericana, Ed. Electrónica  Núm. Especial. Noviembre-Diciembre 2005  Madrid: Antropólogos Iberoamericanos en Red. ISSN: 1578-9705

En este artículo explicaremos, a partir de un trabajo etnográfico realizado en el Servicio de Teleasistencia de la... more En este artículo explicaremos, a partir de un trabajo etnográfico realizado en el Servicio de Teleasistencia de la Cruz Roja de Cataluña, cómo la teoría del actor-red nos permite analizar una de las características clave de este servicio: la atención inmediata y constante. Frente a los espacios de encierro propios de las instituciones tradicionales de asistencia, el servicio de teleasistencia dispone de un espacio asistencial totalmente personalizado para sus usuarios sin salir de casa y con sólo apretar un botón. Mediante la teoría del actor red podemos explicar cómo el dispositivo construye este espacio telemático no a partir de la supresión del espacio objetivo como resultado de la velocidad de las nuevas tecnologías sino como la resultante u efecto de diversas articulaciones singulares entre elementos heterogéneos. Motivo por el cual, no hablaremos de espacio sino de espacialidades. En este servicio, por tanto, existen diferentes espacialidades. En primer lugar una espacialidad regional definida a partir de fronteras que separan los diferentes elementos. Así, el servicio se articula entorno a diferentes lugares: oficinas locales y provinciales, hogares, etc. En segundo lugar, una espacialidad reticular donde a través de la circulación de diferentes objetos, los usuarios, voluntarios, técnicos y tele-operadores, a pesar de estar en diferentes lugares, forman parte de una misma red y están próximos entre sí. Y en tercer lugar, tenemos la espacialidad ígnea, que remite directamente al trabajo de atención que realizan los tele-operador. Aquí prevalece la in-formación que no se mueve sino que reúne sobre sí mismo, a cada instante, una heterogeneidad dispersa y lejana.

Embodying autonomy in a Home Telecare Service

by Daniel Lopez

López, D. and Domènech, M. (2009). Embodying autonomy in a Home Telecare Service. Sociological Review, 56(s2), Pages 181 - 195

Immunity beyond the home: The emergence of new forms of protection through telecare

by Tomás Sánchez Criado

Presented at the symposium 'Care and the art of dwelling', EASST-4S Conference, Rotterdam, 20-23 August, 2008

Dwelling the Telecare Home: Place, Location and Habitality

by Tomás Sánchez Criado

D. López & T. Sánchez-Criado (2009). In Space & Culture, 12(3), 343-358

Home has become a newly fostered place for care giving in what might be called an aging in place paradigm. As a... more Home has become a newly fostered place for care giving in what might be called an aging in place paradigm. As a result, thinking about how the home's spatialities are configured and how they might transform caring has become an important issue for the social sciences. This article is a contribution to this line of thought and looks at being-at-home from a non-anthropocentric point of view. By focusing on the telecare cases of an ongoing ethnographic project and drawing on Heideggerian insights on dwelling and place, we coin the term habitality. We think this term is useful for two purposes: (1) to think about the home as a materially heterogeneous set of spatialities and subjectivities and (2) to understand being-at-home not as a way of living in an enclosed and protected shelter of routine activities, but as a way of combining those spatialities and subjectivities and the differences (and oddities) they might bring.