I always read Laurie Orlov's blog posts about Ageing in Place Technology. The most recent one talks about some of the latest tech developments. All very interesting.
As I was reading I kept thinking about last evening at the pub with a group of friends,
We are all more than tech savvy, probably verging on the tech geek spectrum. The other thing we share is first hand experience of having to care for somebody who is ageing in place.
The story might vary a tad but it normally involves relatives in their late 80s with multiple health conditions - often including dementia. Very often the children live far away and so care has to be arranged with local care suppliers.
One set of friends had recently needed to buy the services of somebody to 'live in' with their parents. The young man, from somewhere in Central Europe, turned out to be an accomplished cook but even more valuable had a wide range of nursing/medical skills. Wow, who does he work for, what is his name, what is his contact details - it was like finding a nugget of gold.
The reason I relate this story is that it seems to me that we have a plethora of technology aimed at the care sector (which is great) but the limiting factor to it delivering benefits is the human resource to do the nasty stuff of actually caring.
I don't have a solution but I think a little more realisation from the tech suppliers of the reality wouldn't go amiss. All the more reason to applaud the Entrepreneur in Residence scheme operated by Brookdale. Dick Stroud
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