Ageing with telecare: care or coercion in austerity?

Abstract

In recent years images of independence, active ageing and staying at home have come to characterise a successful old age in western societies. 'Telecare' technologies are heavily promoted to assist ageing-in-place and a nexus of demographic ageing, shrinking healthcare and social care budgets and technological ambition has come to promote the 'telehome' as the solution to the problem of the 'age dependency ratio'. Through the adoption of a range of monitoring and telecare devices, it seems that the normative vision of independence will also be achieved. But with falling incomes and pressure for economies of scale, what kind of independence is experienced in the telehome? In this article we engage with the concepts of 'technogenarians' and 'shared work' to illuminate our analysis of telecare in use. Drawing on European-funded research we argue that home-monitoring based telecare has the potential to coerce older people unless we are able to recognise and respect a range of responses including non-use and 'misuse' in daily practice. We propose that re-imagining the aims of telecare and redesigning systems to allow for creative engagement with technologies and the co-production of care relations would help to avoid the application of coercive forms of care technology in times of austerity.

Ubiquitous technologies for older people

“…[14,52,73]). Such contributions criticised the recurrent framing in technology research according to which older people are a medical and economic problem [45,79]. These authors claimed that this framing reflected the rhetoric of compassion associated with a ''deficit-driven design'' [57].…”

Turning to Peers: Integrating Understanding of the Self, the Condition, and Others’ Experiences in Making Sense of Complex Chronic Conditions

“…There has been a push in recent years towards moving care outside clinical settings and giving patients more responsibility in order to contain costs and promote independent living (Mort et al 2013), increasingly through the use of personal health tools. With new wireless, networked, and sensor-based advances, the choice of self-management practices, tools, and technologies has never been greater (Randell et al 2010).…”

From Triple Win to Triple Sin: How a Problematic Future Discourse is Shaping the Way People Age with Technology

“…This essay is not about demonstrating the prevalence of the ageing-and-innovation discourse. This has been done elsewhere by Mort et al [4], and examples of recent incarnations of the ageing-and-innovation discourse can easily be found across virtually all pertinent innovation policy programmes in Europe. 1 We use the term discourse in a pragmatic manner, i.e., we are not so much interested in the critical analysis of the actors and means that have shaped the discourse (an interesting topic in its own right, for sure), but in its performative power.…”