In elderly care, or the care industry in general, technology enabled care and digital telecare are some of the more common topics to discuss, especially given the innovations and technological advancements available that positively impact care receivers and care providers. However, another important aspect to explore and emphasise, today more than ever, is personalised care.
According to The NHS England, personalised care is giving people the choice and control over how their care is planned and administered. Personalised care takes into account multiple factors about individual patients and other care receivers – required preferences, specific circumstances, and individual and special needs among other things.
The NHS has also recently developed a framework for personalised care with six components: shared decision making (SDM); supported self-management; personalised care and support planning; social prescribing; patient choice and; personal health budgets.
The healthcare landscape is constantly changing, and along with the expectations of people from the healthcare system, the need for highly personalised and specific approach is becoming more evident today.
According to the Personalised Care Institute, research has shown that there are generally better outcomes, better experiences, and less health inequities when patients and care receivers are given the opportunity to be involved in the decision-making process in their personalised healthcare. In a nutshell, personalised care is taking into account the needs of the individual to come up with an approach to meet the specific needs required.
Given the apparent importance and significance of personalised care, the care providers and solutions providers can take this into account to ultimately be able to meet the needs of the care receivers hence provide them with uniquely adapted approaches and solutions. This works better than implementing a “one size fits all” approach with the assumption that it would work for everyone involved.
While personalised care – in the context of elderly care – has a holistic approach and has multiple facets, one way of meeting the needs of care receivers, as well as care providers, is by utilising modern smart and digital solutions already available. In nursing homes, these innovative devices and systems allow each individual to receive what’s essentially needed, while also allowing care and solutions providers to tailor their products and services to correspond to these specific needs.
Moreover, smart solutions provide specific approaches to complex challenges often encountered in care homes. They also have the potential to streamline processes in care homes, resulting in a much more efficient working environment that benefits the care providers too.
A practical example is the availability of advanced medication robots that assist e.g. patients in their medication regimen. These robots are useful in assisting to properly adhere to the exact schedule of medicine intake, which is crucial considering a large number of deaths in Europe are attributed to improper adherence to medical regimens.
Care receivers in nursing homes can also be consulted and involved in the decision on when they want to be monitored by smart cameras, as these devices can be configured to only monitor the care receivers during specific times of the day. This also addresses the issue of privacy in monitoring care receivers, which previously made them reluctant and unwilling to be monitored by cameras.
Highly innovative and life-changing smart glasses able to address mobility concerns have recently also been developed. In addition to their core function, the user can also control lights, shutters, as well as heating via the smart glasses, thanks to the integration of a smart offline voice-activated assistant.
Ultimately, the availability of these solutions provides each individual much more control over how they prefer to receive care. Care providers and nursing homes on the other hand, are also able to focus on improving the quality of care by optimising their working environment and eliminating some unnecessary processes.
Read more: 5 Ways Modern Elderly Care Solutions Improve the Working Environment in Nursing Homes
With the core concept of personalised care being centred on the specific needs of each care receiver – as well as providing them with solutions for this – having a highly customisable and flexible platform is an equally important factor in building this type of individually based system. Skyresponse offers a 100% cloud-based and future-proof platform, allowing the users to fully customise their systems and integrate new and upcoming solutions and devices according to the specific needs of their clients.