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The “Creating Age-friendly Communities: Housing and Technology” publication presents contemporary, innovative, and insightful narratives, debates, and frameworks based on an international collection of papers from scholars spanning the fields of gerontology, social sciences, architecture, computer science, and gerontechnology. This extensive collection of papers aims to move the narrative and debates forward in this interdisciplinary field of age-friendly cities and communities. (This book is a reprint of the Special Issue Creating Age-friendly Communities: Housing and Technology that was published in Healthcare)
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Assistive Technology (AT) is used at various points in the lifespan by those coping with either short-term or long-term impairments, which can involve living with chronic conditions and/or comorbidities. In the case of older adults, AT can support or compensate for the functional or cognitive declines that they are likely to face in later life. AT can be integrated as part of smart homes (see Figure 1 from van Dijken et al, 2006); and should be safe to use, effective, easy to access, affordable, and not seen as stigmatising. In addition, AT should support older adults to have a meaningful life while building self-esteem, and autonomy and promoting social participation and community engagement. For this roundtable discussion, we present and discuss a WHO-ISG collaborative project focused on Assistive Technology for Healthy Ageing. For this project, we consider applications and use AT not only from a medical standpoint but also situated within a social perspective in the context of Gerontechnology. Results and propositions according to the WHO-UNICEF global report on assistive technology were applied as a starting point for this project (WHO, 2022), prioritising the potential benefits to individuals, their communities, and society and with a focus on identifying potential barriers that may occur and how to mitigate them.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) strives to assist and inspire cities to become more “age-friendly”, and the fundamentals are included in the Global Age-Friendly Cities Guide. An age-friendly city enables residents to grow older actively within their families, neighbourhoods and civil society, and o ers extensive opportunities for the participation of older people in the community. Over the decades, technology has become essential for contemporary and future societies, and even more imperative as the decades move on, given we are nearly in our third decade of the twenty-first century. Yet, technology is not explicitly considered in the 8-domain model by the WHO, which describes an age-friendly city. This paper discusses the gaps in the WHO’s age-friendly cities model in the field of technology and provides insights and recommendations for expansion of the model for application in the context of countries with a high human development index that wish to be fully age-friendly. This work is distinctive because of the proposed new age-friendly framework, and the work presented in this paper contributes to the fields of gerontology, geography urban and development, computer science, and gerontechnology. Original article at MDPI; DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16193525 (This article belongs to the Special Issue Quality of Life: The Interplay between Human Behaviour, Technology and the Environment)
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The “Age-Friendly Cities & Communities: States of the Art and Future Perspectives”publication presents contemporary, innovative, and insightful narratives, debates, and frameworks based on an international collection of papers from scholars spanning the fields of gerontology, social sciences, architecture, computer science, and gerontechnology. This extensive collection of papers aims to move the narrative and debates forward in this interdisciplinary field of age-friendly cities and communities. CC BY-NC-ND Book CC BY Chapters © 2021 by the authors Original book at: https://doi.org/10.3390/books978-3-0365-1226-6 (This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue Feature Papers "Age-Friendly Cities & Communities: State of the Art and Future Perspectives" that was published in IJERPH)
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The use of the Zora robot was monitored and evaluated in 14 nursing care organizations (15 locations). The Zora robot, a Não robot with software, is designed as a social robot and used for pleasure and entertainment or to stimulate the physical activities of clients in residential care. In the first year, the aim was to monitor and evaluate how the care robot is used in daily practice. In the second year, the focus was on evaluating whether the use of Zora by care professionals can be extended to more groups and other type of clients. Interviews, questionnaires and observations were used as instruments to reveal the progress in the use of the robot and to reveal the facilitators and barriers. Care professionals experienced several barriers in the use of the robot (e.g., start-up time and software failures). The opportunity they had to discuss their experience during project team meetings was seen as a facilitator in the project. Furthermore, they mentioned that the Zora robot had a positive influence on clients as it created added value for the care professionals in having fun at work.
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BACKGROUND: There is a growing interest in empowering older adults to age in place by deploying various types of technology (ie, eHealth, ambient assisted living technology, smart home technology, and gerontechnology). However, initiatives aimed at implementing these technologies are complicated by the fact that multiple stakeholder groups are involved. Goals and motives of stakeholders may not always be transparent or aligned, yet research on convergent and divergent positions of stakeholders is scarce. OBJECTIVE: To provide insight into the positions of stakeholder groups involved in the implementation of technology for aging in place by answering the following questions: What kind of technology do stakeholders see as relevant? What do stakeholders aim to achieve by implementing technology? What is needed to achieve successful implementations? METHODS: Mono-disciplinary focus groups were conducted with participants (n=29) representing five groups of stakeholders: older adults (6/29, 21%), care professionals (7/29, 24%), managers within home care or social work organizations (5/29, 17%), technology designers and suppliers (6/29, 21%), and policy makers (5/29, 17%). Transcripts were analyzed using thematic analysis. RESULTS: Stakeholders considered 26 different types of technologies to be relevant for enabling independent living. Only 6 out of 26 (23%) types of technology were mentioned by all stakeholder groups. Care professionals mentioned fewer different types of technology than other groups. All stakeholder groups felt that the implementation of technology for aging in place can be considered a success when (1) older adults' needs and wishes are prioritized during development and deployment of the technology, (2) the technology is accepted by older adults, (3) the technology provides benefits to older adults, and (4) favorable prerequisites for the use of technology by older adults exist. While stakeholders seemed to have identical aims, several underlying differences emerged, for example, with regard to who should pay for the technology. Additionally, each stakeholder group mentioned specific steps that need to be taken to achieve successful implementation. Collectively, stakeholders felt that they need to take the leap (ie, change attitudes, change policies, and collaborate with other organizations); bridge the gap (ie, match technology with individuals and stimulate interdisciplinary education); facilitate technology for the masses (ie, work on products and research that support large-scale rollouts and train target groups on how to use technology); and take time to reflect (ie, evaluate use and outcomes). CONCLUSIONS: Stakeholders largely agree on the direction in which they should be heading; however, they have different perspectives with regard to the technologies that can be employed and the work that is needed to implement them. Central to these issues seems to be the tailoring of technology or technologies to the specific needs of each community-dwelling older adult and the work that is needed by stakeholders to support this type of service delivery on a large scale. KEYWORDS: aged; eHealth; focus groups; health services for the elderly; implementation management; independent living; project and people management; qualitative research; technology
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