Improving adult day services through technology: a user-based approach

Abstract

Adult day services (ADS) are receiving increased attention due to shifts in health and social policies encouraging home and community-based services for an aging population. However, some issues hinder ADS effectiveness such as the need of diversification of interventions focused on elderly people (with different needs and dependency levels) or the undertrained staff. This work presents an analysis of current ADS gaps from interviews to Spanish geriatric experts and scientific literature. An innovative user-based technology implementation is approached to address the most relevant missing gaps identified: formal assessment of user's skills and status before joining the ADS, establishment of personalised interventions for each user, user classification on groups according to characteristics of user members etc. This approach allows to assess elderly over time to generate knowledge about his/her psychological and physical conditions and about the general factors that accelerate/delay deterioration caused by age.