From a certain age on, many people will need support from healthcare and social care services. For example for carrying out daily living activities such as shopping and personal hygiene, or for managing chronic diseases such as chronic heart failure and chronic pulmonary diseases.
But today social care and healthcare services are often delivered independently by different providers. This can cause many practical difficulties like having to run from one provider to another or being unsure about who is responsible for what. As a consequence, the quality of the care services can be diminished with notable effects for service clients, their family and close relations.
CommonWell delivered integrated eCare services to demonstrate how things can be done better.
Integrated eCare can mean many things. Within CommonWell, "integration" means that social care and health care services for older people are provided in a joint-up manner as much as possible. "eCare" encompasses for instance devices that are placed in your home to provide safety and security, to support you in daily living or to help you living with a chronic disease. A common example for this kind of devices is a so-called social alarm where you can push a button to get help in an emergency. Other examples for eCare technology are used by service providers, e.g. to manage and exchange data about their clients.
Under the heading of integrated eCare, many different types of joint-up social and health care care services are possible. CommonWell piloted four service concepts in four places in Europe, involving hundreds of service users including older people, family members with care responsibilities, and social and health care professionals.
Together with the piloting of the Commonwell services in four countries, a comprehensive evaluation was carried out to find out whether integrated eCare services can bring about tangible benefits. The evaluation showed that there are indeed positive impacts on older people, including those with chronic conditions, and their relations with caring responsibility. It also showed that social and health care professionals as well as service providers can benefit from integrated services.
Read more about the impacts of CommonWell on people receiving care...
If you want to have more detailed results, the full evaluation report with all results is available here...
CommonWell showed that integrated eCare services can be made a reality, to the benefit of older people receiving care, their family members and the people providing social and health care services. What is needed now is that more and more care service providers across Europe start offering joint-up services to their clients...and that clients start asking their providers for it.
Read more about the possibilities to receive integrated eCare services...
