Improving Care for Persons with Dementia
Course: Social Technologies to improve the lives of persons with Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders (ADRD) and their caregivers/care partners, led by Prof. Sue Levkoff.
China experiencing population aging at an unprecedented rate. Concomitant with population aging, China can expect to experience significant increases in the number of persons with dementia, for which aging in the most significant risk factor. Dementia, a group of serious and debilitating neurological conditions that cause progressive deterioration in a person’s cognition, behavior, and function, results in complex care needs as the dementia progresses. Both population aging and the prevalence of dementia are projected to increase significantly in China, resulting in health and economic burden on family caregivers, healthcare facilities, health care providers, and communities.
At the same time, there has been an explosion in a variety of different kinds of technologies to support a dementia-friendly care system. These technological advancements offer promise of supporting informal family caregivers, healthcare facilities, health care providers, and communities, as each stakeholder group attempts to respond to these social, health, and economic challenges.
The goal of this project is to develop a multidisciplinary course that provides an overview of the field of existing social technologies that have been developed to improve the lives of persons with ADRD their caregivers/care partners, as well as to identify possible next generation technologies that can further enhance the lives of persons with ADRD and their caregivers/care
partners.
The course takes a multidisciplinary approach, which is necessary to foster the collaborations needed among representatives of key groups involved in technology development and technology deployment, including: geriatricians, gero-psychiatrists, social workers, psychologists, neurologists, computer scientists, and mechanical, electrical, and engineering professionals.
The proposed course will focus on social technologies with the potential for broad impact. Social technologies will be assessed according to several parameters, including: evidence-base for effectiveness, acceptance/usability, cost, and scalability.
This project responds to China’s need to prepare for a dementia friendly workforce with the education, skills, and training to provide quality dementia care, focusing on non-pharmacological approaches, which might be facilitated through the delivery of technology-enabled services.
The proposed project objectives align seamlessly with the initiative vision and the charter of social technology. My work over the past decade has focused on how technology can play an important role in enhancing quality of life and independence of older adults, while at the same time reducing individual and societal costs of caring for older persons. Thus, a focus on the ‘social’ has always been, and continues to be central to my research, including the research proposed for JITRI. By conducting qualitative research with local stakeholders in China throughout the project, we make sure that the design, development, and implementation of the technology-related educational course is well adapted to the social, cultural, and clinical contexts of China, which we believe is a core of the social technology approach.
The provision of care to older adults with dementia is challenging, and accompanied by a number of ethical issues that are greatly influenced by culture, including those related to: autonomy/freedom versus paternalism/disempowerment, beneficence versus maleficence, dignity/personhood versus stigma/discrimination, social inclusion/versus replacement or loss of social contact, equity and justice, privacy and data security, overreliance on technology, new risks, and false security. With our Chinese collaborators, we will address ethical issues that arise related to each of the project objectives.