Smart and Social Home Care: a Sustainable Solution at the Crossroads of Technology and Public Health and Social Sciences

Anciaux, Amélie;Lits, Grégoire
(2021) 15th ESA Conference — Location: Barcelona (31.August.2021)

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The intensification of ageing of the Belgian population will be a major challenge in the coming years. The current system, where elderly people live in elderly care homes will not be sustainable in this growing context because of the lack of infrastructure and personnel, but also because it is too expensive to maintain it at such large scale. For this reason, the nature of the aid provided to elderly people needs a radically change, with a major shift towards home care (assisted living) as compared to care homes. This trend also responds to the wishes of a majority of people in Belgium which want to grow old at home, connected with their community. This paper presents the first results of an interdisciplinary (sociology/engineering) research project aiming at developing an integrated and secure home care technological solution centred around the elderly and her/his social care network. The solution combines smart home (IoT) solutions together with communication technologies, enabling the cooperation and communication between the care network (family, professional, neighbours…) and the elderly. We will present the analysis of the first qualitative phase of the project aiming at understanding the discrepancies between elderlies’ perceptions of intelligent and social homecare solutions, and perceptions of other members of their care network. This analysis will contribute to the field of critical data studies and ageing sociology by interrogating the perception of digitalisation of care, and its risk of dehumanisation (Lits et al. 2017; Bourguignon et al. 2016), through an original methodology based on crossed interviews from social care network.
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Anciaux, A., & Lits, G. (2021). Smart and Social Home Care: a Sustainable Solution at the Crossroads of Technology and Public Health and Social Sciences. 15th ESA Conference, Barcelona. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/112120