The social considerations for moving health services into the home: A telecare perspective

Benefits of telecare have been lower than expected partly because of the social aspects in homes. This paper examines how social aspects are dealt with in telecare design. The objective is to provide guidelines on how social aspects can be captured and applied when designing telecare. A pilot study was conducted in a telecare provider domain to determine how social aspects encountered were dealt with. Social constructivism is applied to capture the user preferences and organisational semiotics to provide structure to the social aspects. The research presents a norm based framework that involves the user in the design process. Validation results confirm that the framework is structurally stable and is implementable. Applying technology in homes offers challenges because of user preferences. Capturing these preferences and applying them at source raises the quality of care. The results of this study can be applied in introducing technology in other socially dominated environments.

► Social aspects are important in the wellbeing of individuals receiving care.
► Telecare designers face challenges in applying social aspects in solution design.
► A validated norm based framework applying social aspects in telecare is proposed.
► A systematic method of configuring devices applied in telecare solutions is offered.