Technology Trends
Robots and Aged Care: What Is the Role for Government in Stewarding Disruptive Innovations?
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Helen Dickinson, Catherine Smith
Many countries are experiencing significant changes in relation to aged care services. As populations age, we see an increased in chronic and complex illness and disability and greater expectations about the types of services that should be delivered and outcomes achieved. At the same time, aged care services are finding it increasingly difficult to recruit an appropriate workforce. Advances in technology have offered a potential solution to these twin demand and supply-side pressures through the development of robotics. In this paper we report on an Australian study exploring the ways in which robots are being used in aged care services. Although there is a burgeoning literature in this area, the majority of the commentary and evidence tends to revolve around their technical efficacy, their acceptability to older people, or the legal ramifications of such innovations. There remains a serious lack of attention within the public policy and public management literature to the actual implementation of robots in care settings. This study explores the roles that robots should and, even more critically, should not play in care delivery and the role that government has as a steward in shaping these roles.
Age-friendly Design for Accessibility : Citizen Scientists Bringing Meaningful Changes to the Built Environment
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Anthony Tuckett
Our Voice is a practical model for improving the care and support of older person citizen scientists. Our Voice is a citizen, science-driven community model for health promotion which addresses health equity. Our Voice conceptualises citizen science whereby people document their physical and social environments, code and synthesize their data, and use the findings to advocate for change. Using a simple mobile application called the Stanford Healthy Neighbourhood Discovery Tool (The Discovery Tool) seniors are able to document local environmental features. We report on a small study that implemented and evaluated the application at and in the vicinity of Burnie Brae – a seniors’ centre offering a wide range of social, educational, and recreational activities to people aged fifty years and older (Chermside, Australia). A group of community dwelling older adults undertook a neighbourhood walk in and around the vicinity of their centre using the handheld, tablet-based application designed to record GPS-tracked walking routes, georeferenced photographs, and record audio narratives. As citizen scientists the older adults collectively identified and prioritised challenges and brainstormed solutions which they then presented to the Chief Executive Officer and members of the Board of Burnie Brae. We propose that older adults acting as citizen scientists are able to make meaningful changes to the environment in which they rest and play. We recommend this citizen science approach for engaging and empowering older adults to be agents of healthful change in their own communities.
Digital Health Technologies in an Aging Society: A Critical Approach from an Inequality Perspective
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Arianna Poli, Susanne Kelfve, Andreas Motel Klingebiel
Digital health technologies have great potential in supporting health and wellbeing of individuals, even of older adults, and in optimizing the current care provision. This explains why many countries are increasingly digitalizing health and care services. However, some studies report that digital health technologies, when implemented on a routine basis, tend to lack inclusiveness, especially regarding underserved and vulnerable groups of individuals. Thus, a growing concern is whether digital health technologies guarantee equal access and similar advantages to different groups of older adults. Such exclusiveness might partially originate from the selective participation occurring in digital health research, especially when it targets older adults, which in turn might lead to exclusive technologies. The cumulative life-course inequality lens, combined with concepts from digital sociology, can explain both the advantages for diverse groups of older adults regarding digital health and the possible replication of existing inequalities through digital technologies. Building on these foundations, we discuss a conceptualization of the selective participation in digital health research and present a methodological approach developed for analyzing and estimating its impact on the results obtained. In order for society to exploit fully the potential of a digitalized society and benefit from the advantages of digital health technologies, inclusiveness and equality must be kept as fundamental assumptions. One way to ensure this is to identify possible exclusiveness and inequalities that might derive from digital health technologies early on in their testing phases, in order to enable policy and practice to move toward more inclusive strategies.
