JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

People with disability following a serious injury require long-term care. Long-term care is changing with the availability and advances in cost and function of technologies, such as home automation. There is a dearth of evidence relating to the impact of home automation for people with a disability and few rigorous evaluations about the costs and return on investment.

Objective:

This study seeks to describe the impact of home automation for people with disability by conducting an evaluation of the costs and outcomes for individuals, families and the wider community using a Social Return on Investment (SROI) approach.

Methods:

SROI is a form of economic evaluation that develops a theory of change to examine the relationship between inputs, outputs, and outcomes. SROI has six phases: 1) identify scope and stakeholders, 2) map outcomes, 3) evidence outcomes and give them value, 4) establish impact, 5) calculate the SROI and 6) report findings. Individuals with a disability that use home automation, and key stakeholders will be interviewed. The impact of home automation will be established with financial proxies and appropriate discounts applied to avoid overestimating the costs. The SROI ratio will be calculated, and findings reported.

Results:

The project was funded in November 2021 by the Lifetime Support Authority. Recruitment is underway and data collection is expected to be completed by October 2022. Final results of the study will be published in March 2023.

Conclusions:

To our knowledge this study represents the first study in Australia and internationally to employ SROI to estimate the social, personal and community outcomes of home automation for people with a disability following a serious injury. This research will provide valuable information for funders, consumers, researchers, and the public to guide and inform future decision-making.