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| EPSRC Reference: |
GR/S29058/01 |
| Title: |
Supporting independence. New products, new practices, new communities |
| Principal Investigator: |
Professor J Barlow |
| Other Investigators: |
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| Researcher Co-investigator: |
| Dr SC Bayer |
Mr R Curry |
Dr NA Hine |
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| Project Partner: |
| Age Concern and Help the Age |
Anchor Trust |
Care & Repair (England) |
| Ricability |
Thomas Pocklington Trust |
Tunstall Telecom Ltd |
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| Department: |
Imperial College Business School |
| Organisation: |
Imperial College London |
| Scheme: |
Standard Research |
| Starts: |
01 October 2003 |
Ends: |
31 March 2007 |
Value (£): |
695,976
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| EPSRC Research Topic Classifications: |
| Intelligent Measurement Systems |
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| EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications: |
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| Related Grants: |
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| Panel History: |
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Summary |
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Working with housing and care providers, the team will evaluate the deployment of a variety of telecare technologies in three contrasting housing settings - a large-scale care village, an extra-care facility and the mainstream private sector housing stock. Information from user-centred studies focusing on housing, health and social care needs will help to inform the type of telecare interventions that are made. Continuous data gathered through lifestyle monitoring and modelling will be integrated with expressed user needs and observed changes in the quality of life of users and carers to help identify where the intervention has made a difference. In parallel to the user-centred research, the team will also explore the impact of the interventions on the organisational processes of care delivery, drawing conclusions on the potential system-wide impact of telecare. The proposed research will therefore address a range of policy agendas relating to the prevention and alleviation of the problems of ageing and disability.
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| Final Report Summary |
Telecare is the use of information and communications technology to provide health and social care directly to people in their own homes. It uses sensors to help monitor an individual's vital signs or their daily activities. This allows a response to an immediate need, such as a fall or a sudden change in vital signs, to be triggered. Longer term evidence of a change in someone's condition can also be gathered by monitoring their daily activities.
Governments in many countries see telecare as a way of supporting and enhancing the care services. And telecare offers the prospect of improving people's quality of life by helping them to remain in their own home rather than having to move to residential care or enter hospital.
There have been many telecare trials around the world, mostly focusing on monitoring safety and security in people's homes and their vital signs. However, there is great interest in 'lifestyle monitoring' because changes in lifestyle or activities could herald increased care needs. If these changes can be identified earlier, this would allow more timely support to be given. Some lifestyle monitoring trials have already been undertaken but these have been inconclusive. The Supporting Independence project brought together three universities, an NHS Foundation Trust, a specialist housing and care provider, and a telecare supplier to investigate the challenges of introducing lifestyle monitoring in different types of housing setting and with different groups of people.
The research has provided important new insights into the complexity of undertaking lifestyle monitoring, as well as the problems of implementing telecare from the perspectives of individual users, social and health services, and technology suppliers. It showed that events triggering increased care needs can be identified by reviewing vital signs and lifestyle data, but patterns are not easily discernable and the predictive capabilities are not immediately apparent - a deep knowledge the individual and how they live is needed to 'make sense of sensors'.
The project also looked at the possible impact of telecare across the care system, should it be mainstreamed. This pointed to its potential benefits in improving the capacity of the care system to cope with an ageing population and the rising incidence of long term chronic conditions. However, better data are needed to adequately model the impact.
The research was carried out at a time of considerable development in UK telecare policy - towards the end of our project government made available over 100m to support new telecare services. Telecare is now embedded in key health and social care policies. Our research provides pointers to future service models for telecare, but it also raises questions about who should be responsible for organising and providing them. A key question is who should co-ordinate and integrate technology suppliers, monitoring centres and the care services. At present, this is unclear in the UK, posing risks for government aspirations for mainstreaming telecare.
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| Further Information: |
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| Organisation Website: |
http://www.ic.ac.uk |
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