Question

How the Long-Term Care Industry Has Begun to Embrace Technology and Why Long-Term Care Needs Tech Innovation. What are the problem that technology solves in LTC?

Answer 1

Long term care industry provide long term care, supervision and support to individuals who can no longer take care of themselves and perform activities of daily living independently.

Individuals who require long term care includes those with chronic illness, disease, physical and cognitive impairment, injury and older adults.

According to some researchers, the U.S. will have a growing population of the elderly in upcoming years. This will increase the demands for long term care. Also there has been an ongoing shortage of nursing staff. This will lead to increases demand of health care and reduced service providers. To maintain a balance between the demand and supply of long term care services, the industry must integrate the use of technology based interventions.

Technology based interventions will help reduce the work burden on healthcare providers, improve the quality of care and efficacy of the treatments. It will also save time and reduce human errors. They will also help people perform their ADLs, improve quality of life, give a sense of independence.

Some of the technology based interventions are :

1. Use of infrared alarms in lift, doors and other areas to allocate the residents of LTC facility.

2. Video calling and chats through computer and internet will help the people in LTC connect to their friends and family.

3. Use of applications with activity cueing to monitor their health status

4. Autominders to keep track of their medicines and every day schedules.