Background

More and more elderly persons are living in their own home and with support from home care due to health deterioration. This puts demands on society and especially health care to support health and self-care for the elderly persons. Therefore its essential to develop new innovative solutions which both enhance communication between the elderly person and the nurse and also increase the elderly persons´ involvement in their everyday care. An information- and communication technology (ICT)-platform was developed with content from the perspective from elderly persons, health care professionals and the literature. The platform is developed in collaboration with a Swedish company specialized in health care management consulting and new innovative care (Health Navigator). The aim with the project is to describe experiences an ICT-platform with focus on user friendly and acceptability by elderly persons living in own homes with assistance of home care nurses.

Method

The study has a mixed methods approach advocated for the evaluation of new technologies within health care. The design is underpinned by the Medical Research Council´s complex intervention framework.

Elderly persons > 65 years, living in own homes, with assistance from home care nurses have regularly reported health status for three months. They have also access to evidence-based self-care advice with links to web-based pages and graph on reported health status. The home care nurse receive an alarm according to a risk assessment model and can instant  contact the elderly persons for discussion the health concerns.

Individual interviews with the elderly persons are conducted after the intervention on the experience of using the ICT-platform, with focus on user friendly and acceptability .

Results

Preliminary results will be presented of the elderly persons experiences with focus on user friendly and acceptability of using an ICT-platform from reporting health status, using self-care advice and graph of reported health status.