Technology can never substitute the way healthcare is delivered to the to the aged people. Technology also cannot replace the understanding between the care providers, empathy, kindness, compassion due to the fact that the technology can never replace the care providers that provide care to the care dependent aged people and whose vulnerabilities are exposed. Technology cannot act as a one size fits all solution for all the problems (Peek et al., 2014). However, it is important to note that the technology has the potentialities to enhance the quality of aged care provided to the aged people. The ways that technologies enhance the healthcare delivery are: improve the operational efficiencies, reduce risks and errors, increase increases the capacity and managed the resources effectively, and provides more time to the nurses so that they can deliver personalized support and care (Marchesoni et al., 2015). This study is based on the literature review of the technologies that are used in the ages care facilities.
Technology based healthcare solutions are used for the purpose of effective care delivery to the elderly and aged people. Technologies serve to enhance the quality of care that choose to live in their home or prefer to receive healthcare in the hospitals. The advancement in the technologies has led to enabling the aged people to become self-sufficient for longer periods of time and can maintain independence. Technology is sole reason due to which it has multifaceted impact on the healthcare industry. Firstly, technology along with the advancement in the medicine has resulted in to people living longer. Secondly, technology sets the consumer expectations. Thirdly, technology offers a wide range of activities, entertainment and arrangements (Lee & Coughlin, 2015).
The literature review explicitly deals with the objective of finding the benefits and the probable negative health effects from the utilization of computer and internet, self-monitoring and wearable, telehealth and electronic health records and the technologies that are used to assist the aged people, sensors, Information Communication Technology (ICT). The aged people especially deal with the different kind health issues like falls, dementia and other health related issues that do require technologies for the effective management of the health issues. The literature review explicitly describes how the technologies assist and help in the management of the health issues.
The various technologies are used in the aged people for various issues like chronic diseases, fall risk, social isolation, poor well-being, dementia, dependent living, poor medication management and depression. The technology used for the chronic disease is telemedicine; for the prevention of fall in aged people, sensor technologies and video game technologies are used; in order to prevent the social isolation General Information Communication Technology (ICT), robots are used; in order to address the poor wellbeing telemedicine, General Information Communication Technology and Robot are used; also in order to address the dementia, the General Information Communication Technology and sensor technology are used; for the proper medication management the technology used is medication dispensing device. The general ICT includes the technologies that are commonly used like the internet and computer (Kapadia et al., 2015). The aged people can actively use this technology in order to actively communicate with the friends and family so that to cope with the lifestyle changes. Robotics most rapid growing area of technology and it provides the services in relation to operation of the appliances so that the daily living of the aged people can be supported. Robots are capable enough to respond to the needs of the social connectedness and mobility. Telemedicine is the main purpose due to which specialist consultation is made possible to the distant patients by using the telecommunication devices. Sensor technology are designed to recognise and alert the patient as well as the care givers to respond to the critical events like falling out of bed. The two major reasons due to which the sensor technology has developed at a faster rate is the fall prevention and independent living. The application of the medication management can be related to the accuracy of the medication administered. The video games serve as means of therapy tool and can be used for entertainment and relaxation (Khosravi & Ghapanchi, 2016).
Since the effective introduction of the electronic nursing documentation systems has led to the improvement of the information handling and also to improve the quality. The main aim of this system is to integrate the daily work process and the progress. The usage of the information technology requires a different form of processing of information. the improvement in the quality of the data put into the patient’s records has resulted into the overall improvement of the quality of the care. However, it has also been found that if the data entered is of poor quality then the quality of care received by the aged people also differed. The time spent in entering the data also has a profound impact on the quality of the care delivered. It is possible to see the benefits with respect to the usage of the processing of the information and the time consumed in entering the data. It has also been found that the staffs and health workers have found the information technology as beneficial for it simplifies the daily work routine (Meißner & Schnepp, 2014). The people that are living longer experience the issue of cognitive problems that are associated with the growing age and such aged people face diseases like dementia, neurodegenerative diseases. Dementia is major public health issue and can be effectively mitigated by the development of assistive technologies, that will work for the effective compensation of the cognitive deficits in the aged people with dementia. It has been found that such devices effectively reduce the time that is required during the caregiving assistance, assist the caregiver to provide more care safely and easily, helps in the reduction of stress and immediate relief for the caregivers. Approximately one third of the aged people live in the community alone. Thus the provision of the telehealth and the telecare serve as best way for the therapeutic intervention and assessments (Fleming & Sum, 2014).
Falls in aged people is common and has resulted in to the hip fracture and rates of death are continuously rising. Over the years, the information and communication technologies is aimed towards the prevention of falls, alarms and fall detection in case of fall. There different forma of Information Communication Technology interventions that are adopted to monitor the fall and at the same time alert the healthcare professionals and the health carers. The alert systems work by alerting the health professional via the automation systems that are capable of detecting falls. The technology is a reactive technology and is used to reduce the health complications that arises due to the lying on the floor for longer periods of time. The automation helps into raise the alarm and alerts the carers and the health professionals to assist quickly the person who has fallen. There are different kinds of interventions that can be adapted or created so that the falls can be prevented actively via the Kinect, Wii-fit and exergames. The exercise programs are found to be effective in reducing falls in aged people. The ICT innovation when provide the same type of the exercise programs can effectively reduce the costs and can also increase the adherence of the aged people (Hawley-Hague et al., 2014).
Ageing in the societies and the rising issues of dementia has led to the increasing demand of care home places. The different types of the monitoring systems like the wearable location tracking devices and the bed monitoring systems are applicable for its usage in the in the care homes in order to reduce burden of staff, increase the freedom of resident and enhance safety. A study was conducted which included 24 staff (care workers, senior managers, clinical specialists and registered nurses) 9 residents and 9 relatives. The findings from the study revealed three main themes: the reasons for usage of the technologies, ways through which the technologies are implemented, the usage of the technologies in practice. The primary reason cited in the study regarding the usage of the monitoring systems is to enhance safety. The ways through which the technologies are implemented is through the residents, relatives and staffs. The technologies used generated alarms and it also placed burden on the staff, and they were unable to counter some of the burden. The monitoring systems provided a range of abilities related to data-gathering and were not always considered useful for practice. The implementation of the monitoring technologies is found to be enhancing the safety among the users of the technology and it also facilitated the involvement of all the stakeholders. Staff training is found to be playing a major role in the depth exploration of the benefits associated with the usage of the monitoring technologies (Hall et al., 2017). A study was conducted which involved a cross-sectional survey method and the authors collected the data via the questionnaire which is distributed among the 335 aged caregivers and specialists. The Social assistive technologies like the smart tablets, smartphones and the smart watches are used in the study and only the social robots are used in the study due to the fact that only this type of robots can communicate with people. A social robot can be defined as an autonomous digital machine that has the capability to interact with humans in a social environment. The study was conducted form the perspectives of the ages care providers and at the same time it was found that the consumer directed strategy is best in the reduction of the consumer vulnerability that arises due to usage of the social assistive technologies. The implementation of consumer directed consumer strategy has rendered the caregivers to allot proper amount of time in aged people’s performance. It has been found that the aligning the assistive technologies and the consumer directed care strategies by the care providers has led to the innovative services like the e-services, home care services and also the creation of the new services like home care delivery services. Thus, it is also important to mention that the caregiver must possess the knowledge of using the assistive technologies like the social robots (Khaksar et al., 2017).
The usage of the electronic information system (EIS) that includes the Electronic Health Records is increasing in all the sectors of the health care industry. Research has shown that the EIS is very important for the improvement of the healthcare delivery and also in the reduction of the medical errors. In a study it was found that the three major type of factors like the risk factors were identified that are related to the person’s health, people that are associated with the healthcare system and the aged care system, persons that are associated with the human error. Different types of the strategies are needed in an organization for the reduction of the risks and which can be used to improve the client safety. Electronic Health Record are one of the best solution that are effective in an organizational setting because it leads to improved access and intelligent integration of the functions for the effective decision making (Jiang & Yu, 2014).
Conclusion
Thus from the above study it can be concluded that, technology can both enhance and improve the quality of life of the aged people that either chose to receive healthcare facilities in their home or in clinical setting. The advancement in the technologies in the healthcare has enables the aged population to remain self-sufficient for a longer and extended period of time. The technologies in the healthcare that are applicable for the general population is also applicable for the aged people. The technologies act to positively improve the health care condition of the aged people. The technologies mainly play the role of identifying and alarming the aged people or the care givers.
References
Fleming, R., & Sum, S. (2014). Empirical studies on the effectiveness of assistive technology in the care of people with dementia: a systematic review. Journal of Assistive Technologies, 8(1), 14-34.
Hall, A., Wilson, C. B., Stanmore, E., & Todd, C. (2017). Implementing monitoring technologies in care homes for people with dementia: A qualitative exploration using Normalization Process Theory. International journal of nursing studies, 72, 60-70.
Hawley-Hague, H., Boulton, E., Hall, A., Pfeiffer, K., & Todd, C. (2014). Older adults’ perceptions of technologies aimed at falls prevention, detection or monitoring: a systematic review. International journal of medical informatics, 83(6), 416-426.
Jiang, T., & Yu, P. (2014). The impact of electronic health records on client safety in aged care homes. In Nursing Informatics (pp. 116-123).
Kapadia, V., Ariani, A., Li, J., & Ray, P. K. (2015). Emerging ICT implementation issues in aged care. International journal of medical informatics, 84(11), 892-900.
Khaksar, S. M. S., Shahmehr, F. S., Khosla, R., & Chu, M. T. (2017). Dynamic capabilities in aged care service innovation: the role of social assistive technologies and consumer-directed care strategy. Journal of Services Marketing, 31(7), 745-759.
Khosravi, P., & Ghapanchi, A. H. (2016). Investigating the effectiveness of technologies applied to assist seniors: A systematic literature review. International journal of medical informatics, 85(1), 17-26.
Lee, C., & Coughlin, J. F. (2015). PERSPECTIVE: Older adults’ adoption of technology: an integrated approach to identifying determinants and barriers. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 32(5), 747-759.
Marchesoni, M. A., Axelsson, K., Fältholm, Y., & Lindberg, I. (2015). Technologies in older people’s care: Values related to a caring rationality. Nursing Ethics, 1, 13.
Meißner, A., & Schnepp, W. (2014). Staff experiences within the implementation of computer-based nursing records in residential aged care facilities: a systematic review and synthesis of qualitative research. BMC medical informatics and decision making, 14(1), 54.
Peek, S. T., Wouters, E. J., van Hoof, J., Luijkx, K. G., Boeije, H. R., & Vrijhoef, H. J. (2014). Factors influencing acceptance of technology for aging in place: a systematic review. International journal of medical informatics, 83(4), 235-248
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