From care to caring

From April 8 to 10, Zorg & ict took place. Three days full of innovative solutions, new technologies and inspiring examples. Anneke Westerlaken was asked to give a keynote on a topic of her choice. That became: from care to caring.

The fact that we are getting older in the Netherlands affects healthcare and healthcare professionals in several ways. First of all, there are more people with a need for care, AND that need for care is getting heavier due to an increase in multimorbid conditions where people have two or more chronic conditions.

In addition, one-third of health care professionals in senior care will retire in the next decade. The number of retirees relative to the number of people working is really going to change, further increasing tightness in the labor market. Finally, care professionals in particular will have to deal with more informal caregiving tasks. Within many networks, they are the ones who take on the most informal care tasks. With increasing demand and decreasing supply, you can count on your fingers that it will be a challenge, to say the least, to continue to guarantee the accessibility of care.

Tool for ordinary life

We are therefore transforming as elder care. Technological innovation helps us keep care accessible, but as with many things in life, it does depend on how we use it. My plea during Zorg & ict was to use technology for 'normal life' and not be too quick to label it as care technology or e-health.

A care circle with neighborhood residents who meet in an app - or Signal! - group agreeing to run errands for each other, help in the garden or play cards with each other every week need not be a concern. A (grand)son who uses Facetime to check whether (grand)mom is taking her medication at the right time does not need special software. And a light at the front door that turns on automatically so you don't trip over the step can simply be picked up at the hardware store.

Humanity starting point

Of course, technological capabilities within healthcare are also increasing. For example, within the Nuts community, software vendors and healthcare ICT workers are working together to develop applications that everyone can use, without competing with each other. As a result, for example, in a short time an application was devised for evening, night and weekend care so that our employees in the sector no longer have to go out with different passwords and logins, but can work from their own system to access client data.

Sober view

And also things like the drip glasses and the medication dispenser help with self-reliance and save professional care. We also see more and more examples around AI, obviously in terms of communication, but also for smarter scheduling, for example. At the same time, a sober view of the possibilities of technology remains relevant. Nonsensical reports remain nonsensical, even if we can do them faster or 'smarter' digitally. And avoiding risks by (even) more monitoring and tracking does not help either in accepting the sometimes uncomfortable reality that risks are also part of life and, above all, should be allowed to remain.

Ordinary life

At the end of my contribution during Care & ict, I add the audience what they see as future possibilities. The response was: an increase in 'empathetic' technology that, for example, in the form of a pet, registers that your stress is increasing and reacts accordingly. I thought about the nursing homes in my neighborhood where I am not allowed to enter the grounds with my dog because of large 'no unauthorized access' signs and realized: we still have a long way to go. Not in terms of deploying technology, but allowing ordinary life to take place.