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Digitalization of Later Life: What Prevents the Care Sector from Meeting the Rapid Digitalization of Older Populations?

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Advances in Human Factors and Ergonomics in Healthcare and Medical Devices (AHFE 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems ((LNNS,volume 263))

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Abstract

The Corona pandemic has accelerated the digitalization of Swedish society showing that most new Internet users turn out to be 76 years and older. At the same time, digitalization of elderly care is progressing more slowly than expected. Why is this? In this paper, robots and personal emergency response systems are examples of digitalization of elderly care, discussed using result from Swedish and European research on social uptake of new technology and work conditions in the care sector. The result points out the contradiction between the high expectations and the large investments made in digital cutting-edge technology for the care sector and the fact that this issue is under-theorized. Also, what works is what is well organized and well integrated in the work and in daily habits and routines. Robots and PERS represent two opposites where the alarms are well integrated but robots based on expectations only.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biomedical Engineering and Health Systems, Royal Institute of Technology, KTH, Stockholm, Sweden

    Britt Östlund

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  1. Britt Östlund
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Correspondence to Britt Östlund .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept.of Pathology, College of Medicine, Univ.of Saskatchewan Royal Univ.Hospital, Saskatoon, SK, Canada

    Jay Kalra

  2. Center for Applied Sys. Engineering, Veterans Affairs, Indianapolis, IN, USA

    Nancy J. Lightner

  3. Campus du Moulin de la Housse, Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, Reims Cedex 2, France

    Redha Taiar

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Östlund, B. (2021). Digitalization of Later Life: What Prevents the Care Sector from Meeting the Rapid Digitalization of Older Populations?. In: Kalra, J., Lightner, N.J., Taiar, R. (eds) Advances in Human Factors and Ergonomics in Healthcare and Medical Devices. AHFE 2021. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 263. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80744-3_36

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80744-3_36

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-80744-3

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