They Don't Care About Us! Care Personnel's Perspectives on Ambient Assisted Living Technology Usage: Scenario-Based Survey Study.
Julia Offermann-van Heek, Martina Ziefle
PMID 30249592WHAT IT FOUND
Care staff imagined an ambient assisted living system and mostly accepted emergency-related monitoring, but rejected cameras, microphones, and routine monitoring.
Disabled people’s care staff were least accepting.
Key findings
01Participants working in disabled people’s care reported lower acceptance of ambient assisted living technologies than participants working in geriatric or medical care.
02Emergency-related monitoring was the most accepted area of the survey.
03Many routine data types and technologies were rejected, including the position of caretakers, whole care situations, conversations, cameras, and microphones, and disabled people’s care staff often rejected them most strongly.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
Participants evaluated a described system rather than using a real system, so privacy concerns may be stronger than they would be after hands-on experience. The sample was from Germany only, so the results may not transfer to other care systems. Most participants were women, and the study did not analyse whether gender affects acceptance. Care contexts overlap in real life, and participants only self-classified their main area. One disabled people’s care institution involved in the project had a proprietary interest in the results. The study measured caregiver attitudes, not patient outcomes or real-world effectiveness.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest. One disabled people’s care institution involved in the project had a proprietary interest in the results.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude from this survey that ambient assisted living technologies are ineffective or that all care staff reject them. It measured imagined acceptance of a described system, and emergency-related monitoring was accepted.