Abstract
BACKGROUND:The care model for supporting elderly people living independently at home relies on the informal and formal assistance of caregivers. Information and communication technology (ICT) offers new approaches for informal care services for this group.METHODS:A longitudinal observational pilot study was carried out in home services in France. Employees of the ADMR home services followed 130 elderly people living at home and who were no more than moderately impaired. A single visual analogue scale (VAS) was used on a smartphone to assess global health every time a person was visited. An alert system was devised to inform the elderly person and/or a responsible person of any deterioration in health status. All medical and social events were recorded throughout the 9-month study.RESULTS:138 people were enrolled and 106 were evaluated. 37 alerts were observed. 21 were confirmed and 16 were false positives. Only employees untrained in the use of the system generated false positive alerts. Six severe medical alerts were observed, including one cancer undetected by the physician, one hospitalization for diabetes, one hospitalization which led to death 6 months later and one hospitalization which resulted in follow-up care.CONCLUSIONS:Social workers can participate in the health system with all the ethical criteria of medicine. To our knowledge, this is the first ICT-based alert system that has been found to produce severe medical alerts by employees of home services.