JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

It is often suggested that smart home and telemonitoring technologies can assist healthcare workers to support older people to age in place. However, there is limited scholarship examining diverse information needs of different groups of healthcare workers and their access to appropriate information technologies.

Objective:

The research reported in this paper explored the issues associated with using technologies that connect older people to their healthcare providers to support aging in place and enhance older people’s health and wellbeing.

Methods:

7 focus group discussions were conducted comprising 44 healthcare professionals who provided clinic-based or in-home services to community dwelling older people. Participants were asked about their information needs and how technology could help them support older people to age in place. The recordings of the sessions were transcribed and thematically analysed.

Results:

The perspectives varied between the respondents who worked in Primary Care clinics and those who worked in community-based services. Three overarching themes were identified: (1) Access to Technology and Systems theme which examined the different levels of technology in use and problems that the various groups of healthcare professionals had in accessing information about their patients. Primary Care professionals had access to good internal information systems but suffered from poor integration with other healthcare providers. However, the community-based teams had very poor access to technology. (2) Collecting and Sharing of Information theme which focused on how technology might be used to provide them with more information about their patients. Primary Care teams were interested in telemonitoring for specific clinical indicators but would like the information to be pre-processed. Community-based teams were more concerned to gain information about patients’ social environment. (3) All respondents identified similar uptake barriers, outlining concerns about cost and funding issues, the usability of systems by older people and information security and privacy.

Conclusions:

The participants perceived the potential benefits of technologies, but they were concerned that the information they received should be pre-processed and integrated with current information systems and tailored to the older people’s unique and changing situation. Several management and governance issues were identified which need to be resolved to enable the widespread integration of these technologies into the healthcare system. The disconnected nature of the current information architecture means that there is no clear way for sensor data from telemonitoring and smart home devices to be integrated with other patient information. Furthermore, cost, privacy, security and usability barriers also need to be resolved. The findings highlight both the importance and the complexity of management and governance of systems to collect and disseminate such information. Much more research into the requirements of all stakeholder groups and how the information can be processed and disseminated is required.