Webinar: Proactive health and welfare technology for Nordic users and societies
Hi and welcome my name is Bengt Andersson and I work at Nordic Welfare Center as a senior adviser in the area of welfare technology and I will be your moderator today during this webinar since 2020 Nordic Welfare Center cooperate with and coordinate the Nordic research network Health and Welfare technology with focus on user perspectives and there is a lot of research going on in this area I was a little bit surprised coming into this network working with these researchers that there are quite many researches and research that has been going on over the last 10 years in this area and today the network consists of nearly 90 researchers from all five Nordic countries with focus on health and welfare technologies and at today's webinar we are going to have focus on a research pro project called Protect project proactive health and welfare technology for Nordic uses and societies and this project has been a part of the research networks activities during the last years Helinä Melkas professor at LUT University of Finland and Christine Gustafsson professor of Sophiahemmet University in Sweden will present the project and after that we will have reflections from user perspectives from Stig-H Nilsson from SPF seniors Sweden and from policy maker perspective from Bjørnar Alexander Andreassen a program manager at the welfare technology program at the Norwegian Directorate of Health in Norway and you can't use your mic or or camera as a participant on this webinar but you can use the chat function so please do don't hesitate to put questions write down questions to us here at the webinar I will forward the questions to our presenters and we'll have a discussion panel discussion at the end of this webinar where we could put your questions if you would like to have captions subtitles you can just click on the show captions function in Zoom and there will be a text coming up helping you to follow this dialogue here okay let's start and first I would like like to welcome Helinä Melkas Helinä is a professor at LUT University in Finland and she's been very active in in starting up this research network that we have also Christine Gustafsson both these professors are very active in this network collaborating with us at the Nordic Welfare Center with different activities in this area and both of them are members of our core group of this network so with this introduction I would like to give the word to you both and I think you will mix between between you both presenting this Protect project proactive Health and Welfare technology for Nordic users and societies so welcome Helinä and Christine thank you very much Bengt and yes we will be presenting together and I will begin with the basics of the project if I'm able to change okay yes so Protect as Bengt already mentioned stands for a proactive health and welfare technology for Nordic users and societies it wasn't a research project as such but it was a networking project where we synthesized and with that Aavanced Nordic research-based knowledge of about this topic of proactive health and welfare technology HWT we had both a user and a societal perspective or actually we had three perspectives but I will go to these levels a bit later my University LUT University from Finland was the coordinating organization and we had also Norwegian Center for health research Danish dementia research center and Mälardalen University as partners in the project and the project itself ended in June this year but we are still distributing or or disseminating the the results and and building on the results in various occasions and actually I think think Christine will tell a little bit more about recent activities in her part this was a networking project because of our funding we were funded by The Joint Committee for Nordic research councils in the humanities and social sciences via NordForsk its Ssretariat was at is at NordForsk currently it was actually at Academy of Finland during the first part of the Project project we have received great support from Nordic Welfare Center and the Nordic research Network on Health and Welfare technology so why did we have this project the use of health and welfare technology is more and more visible you can see health and welfare technology being used in new circumstances in new tasks maybe partly because of the recent great uptake of digital solutions in healthcare and social care due to the corona pandemic for instance so this type type oof technology is playing an increasingly important role in many ways in users lives whether we talk about end users their informal caregivers or professional users in care work more generally speaking and care processes and also in our societies as a whole in the Nordic countries but as also of course elsewhere in many other countries and since this is becoming so important we also need new understanding we need to advance research-based knowledge and understanding of these different levels so to say we need to understand end users and informal caregivers needs and we need to understand implementation related topics and we also need to build up more and more systemic understanding related to organizations and the societal level we can often see that technological solutions may be taken into use too late in an older person's life for instance and so it's really really important to try to be proactive so that they would be taken into use early enough when the person the user can still really benefit from the solution or the device so proactiveness is one topic that we wanted to also advance with the help of our project the Nordic countries are in many ways similar but of course there are also many differences you could say that they are sufficiently similar and sufficiently different for project of this kind so this Nordic region provided an excellent environment for our research or our project it seems that it's taking some time to change the slide sorry about that so how did we work we focused on these three levels that I already referred to in Nordic workshops and the micro level concerns the end users and their informal caregivers the meso level concerns the implementation level professional caregivers and their organizations and the societal level is then the macro level we were able to have nearly 200 workshop participants from the four countries Finland Sweden Norway and Denmark in our workshops and that was really a great way to work it was really interesting to have a combination of researchers from many different scientific disciplines and also many types of stakeholders from for instance user organizations caregivers organizations decision makers from different levels local regional national ministry representatives and I'm probably not even remembering everyone now but there was and of course there were also differences between the countries so a broad range of different stakeholders and the researchers as I already mentioned it was a very multi-disciplinary group from many different scientific disciplines from care sciences and health sciences there were many researchers involved but also from many others such as educational sciences engineering sciences and and so forth and this is really key in my view because we cannot and should not look at this topic from the perspective of one scientific discipline only but it requires a combination of different perspectives and also different methods research methods it was essential for Protect to support early career researchers we had many early career researchers involved from all these four countries and they had an opportunity to present their research at these International workshops and also get feedback concerning their doctoral studies so these early career researchers were or are working on their doctor dissertations or newly graduated as PHD:s we also wanted to understand the diversity of users and value users voices and this is one of the reasons why we had also many user representatives or user organization representatives in our workshops yes thank you for this Helinä Christine Gustafsson is my name and I'm a professor in Health Care Sciences at Sophiahemmet University in Stockholm but I'm also an affiliated researcher at Mälardalen University which was one of the partners in in the Protect project I'm going to present you the results from the the project but first we're going to start to with some kind of definition of health and welfare technology that we use as a concept in this project health and welfare technology is used as an umbrella concept covering a variety of technologies with the aim of supporting people in general citizens including patients older adults and people with disability as well as their relatives to achieve better health independence activity participation safety and security for cast of the expectation of health and welfare technology is an improved working environment and additionally health care and social services organizations expect health and welfare technology support for example logistics data handling and the provision of more effective health care and social care services some examples of the kind of technology that are included in this use of the concept is E-Health Tele-Health Tele-medicine Tele-rehabilitation M-health and home monitoring and now we're going to move over to the results of the Protect project health and welfare technology use does not occur on only one level it affects and is affected in numerous ways by the three levels of micro meso and macro and the dynamics between them we will start with the micro level to successfully support the use of health and welfare technology it is necessary to first understand the challenges it faces and the opportunities it provides at a micro level knowledge is needed for such understanding to emerge a starting point is to acknowledge diversity and people's individual circumstances we concluded that one size does not fit all in principle anyone can be in he a health and welfare technology user at the same time users can have professional roles users have varying needs and may lack awareness of access to and ability to use technology or make sense of information related related to health and welfare technology the main Nordic challenges and to us knowledge needs at the micro level the end users and informal caregivers has been identified as you can see in the slide about digital exclusion for example what kind of active support and how much support is needed and what is sufficient to decrease and hinder digital exclusion active work with digital inclusion is also a way to move forward while the process of digital transformation continues in health care and social care services many people could benefit from the use of health and welfare technology but are yet its uses it's essential to consider how to motivate such nonusers moving to involvement of current users the development and refinement of new methods to involve users should be focused on overall building knowledge about the micro level would benefit from the development of research methods and especially collaboration among different scientific disciplines in general the implementation of technology is challenging and does not occur automatically or in a vacuum major efforts are required for truly successful implementation such as those to develop management practices train professional caregivers and find shared language amongst all the involved safety security and ethical issues are an integral part of health and welfare technology use to deal with these issues there should be a deep understanding of the everyday life of health and welfare technology users and the prerequisites for meaningful technology use should be carefully considered we also need to develop research methods so we better can contribute with research in the area of health and welfare technology use challenges and opportunities at the meso level depend on local characteristics needs and prerequisites of the organization the community municipality or alike one size does not necessarily fit all even at the meso level each care organization and its personnel clients or patients differ through us their knowledge levels implementation challenges and opportunities and needs for change management also vary the main Nordic challenges and throughout knowledge needs at the meso level the professional caregivers and organizations excuse me have been identified and related to change management it's about introducing the use of health and welfare technology changes care processes and the traditional ways of working and giving care also professional caregivers working environment changes in line with the introduction of health and welfare technology which requires planning development and assessments anchoring of the implementation of the technology is a key issue the prerequisites in the organization and services need to be known for example concerning money time existing knowledge and infrastructure care personnels and employees understanding and knowledge of technology use also needs to be increased the incentives for introducing health and welfare technology need to be more clear why would technology be used what technology should be used and how what is available essential and useful and for whom what kind of education training or other competence building are needed we also have identified knowledge needs regarding knowledge it's about decision making processes and leadership participation co-creation collaboration and assessment of needs the importance of introducing technology which corresponds to real needs related to decision making careful attention is required concerning procurement and system admin administration the interoperability of digital products may be a challenge that requires understanding and the broader infrastructure and its readiness to integrate new solutions and finally impact studies and cost effectiveness studies are needed there's a large need of these kind of studies looking into the impact of health and welfare technology has in practice does the technology do what we wanted to do or expected to do for the care professionals the organizations and of course the end uses and is it cost effective moving to the third and last level decision makers plays an important systemic role in the societal strategies and planning related to health and welfare technology use they need sufficient knowledge and a systemic understanding of the broadness of the topic and its links to services and the entire service system while health and welfare technology use has increased across the Nordic countries there is a lot to do in encouraging promoting and even formalizing the use via policies this decision makers has a crucial role in consolidating this trend by establishing line of actions that could be followed to improve the condition for health and welfare technology use the main Nordic challenges and throughout knowledge needs at the micro level the decision makings has been identified as follows the results further confirm the importance of building knowledge on the impact of health and welfare technology use to find out about those including economy and perspectives such as cost for decision makers systematic reviews on what is known are essential this means for example the need for a clear categorization of solutions that would enable systemic monitoring of the appropriateness of solution for different types of uses and their impacts it would also ease the identification of various knowledge gaps various stakeholders should have the opportunity to participate in identifying research gaps concerning health and welfare technology and its use such identification requires understanding and focus on the micro meso and macro levels and decision makers have an important an role to play in this decision makers role in supporting the implementation of change management is crucial the implementation of technology as a part of the care process requires new knowledges and competences the big picture of economy of well-being was emphasized where it is concluded that we need to be more proactive yes Helinä thank you Christine and we will move on to the key messages for the future it was not an easy task to let's say squeeze all this information from the workshops into key messages and there are obviously also many other things that should be and could be emphasized but we came up with with four key messages for the future and the first one is related to collaboration firstly it's essential to really truly involve a diverse range of individuals and organizations and desicion making organizations as well from the user organizational and societal spheres and when I say truly involving it means that these individuals and organizations should not be just targeted as objects but really participate and have their voices heard in these health and welfare technology related processes secondly it's important to to take into account that this health and welfare technology topic is really or requires multidisiplinary and interdisciplinary thinking and work as I already brought up in the beginning we cherished that in our project but it's also generally speaking important for the future so that we can build knowledge collaboratively among different scientific disciplines and also of course a broad range of stakeholders from different fields it's also important to promote really bottom up participatory and action-based policies so that also for instance grassroots care professionals can participate and end users can participate in knowledge building and this needs to concern both needs identification implementation topics related topics and assessment of impacts and effectiveness and knowledge building more generally for instance when you talk about needs identification you cannot really identify needs properly I would say without really bottom up processes because it's not enough to kind of assume what users need it's really important to listen to them also secondly the second key message is related to orientative activities so it's quite typical still nowadays that quite technologically oriented training is provided when when some health and welfare technology device or solution is brought into use but that's not sufficient it's important to provide more than training to expand the focus towards orientative activities as it says in the title towards a more comprehensive and continuous process of training and familiarization of technology in a co-creative way this continuous character is also important because people typically need reminders they need new training sessions so just providing for instance half an hour of a very technical training is not sufficient if we want to really build up more long-term use and implementation skills so in addition to mere introduction it's also important to really learn multifaceted knowledge and skills for this type of technologies' effective use and moreover it needs to be remembered that such orientative activities should absorb even critical views and questioning attitudes concerning technology not everyone is right away willing to take into use such new solutions or devices and it needs to be known why or should be known why and these critical views should be somehow also responded to so that we can come up with more sustainable use and the third and fourth key messages for the future are related to consensus and diversity first of all related to consensus again it's a question of embracing joint learning and creating new awareness together perhaps it's not possible to really reach a full consensus about everything but this joint learning and co-creation is important and as Christine already mentioned there are many different or let's say neighbouring concepts related to health and welfare technology so those should also be clarified what do we actually talk about together and and this kind of knowledge building concerning the concepts and features of of these technologies is also crucial designing policy conventions or designing policies in collaboration with key stakeholders also including companies is one more point that we should pay attention to in the future so stakeholder involvement is absolutely key for for this area of activities diversity you have heard about that already many times during this presentation so we need to acknowledge different users needs and also different users responses to technology again refer to perhaps also questioning attitudes and critical views so one size definitely doesn't fit all and the policies at micro and meso level they need to be developed so that they are targeted to the circumstances in question and differentiated where necessary digital exclusion is a big problem and therefore it's also necessary to work actively towards digital inclusion the process of digital transformation continues we can see more and more digital services being taken into use and while it continues we still need to remember that not everyone is equally skilled and equally ready for various reasons to to use digital services so this inclusion topic is also very very important and we discussed these Protect results in also a broader European context at the European Social Services conference in Malmö in June and we had quite a big audience there from European countries but also outside of Europe many participants and there was a wide agreement about these results obviously there are also many national differences national emphases and national needs and and needs within the different countries can be very different but in general the the participants of this workshop felt that we had recognized some key results in this project and I will hand over to Christine yes thank you Helinä as an continuation of the Protect project we have also invited the business sector the health and welfare technology companies to discuss the results and as you heard in the earlier presentation we didn't do that in the workshops we didn't have any business representatives but here in the beginning of November we participated in the Norwegian national conference E-hälsa in Norway and we invited some companies to discuss the results from the Protect with us and to have what should I say share point of departure in the discussion with the companies we started with an illustration of a quadruple helix collaboration which includes the public authorities the governments parliaments for example and also the civil society with interest groups the different parties and different organizations related to this area and of course it also participated you researchers representing academia but also companies and having this illustration it could be a shared point of departure in the discussion of how we could collaborate better and what can we do together another way to also illustrate this area is to look into the use of health and welfare technology as an ecosystem and and this is an illustration of how this could be seen as well it's about the end users as patients older adults people with disabilities and their relatives and we also add the professionals the healthcare and social services professionals and we add academia the research area about research and development evaluations and the contribution by knowledge but of course also the governments the policy makers which also have needs and and regulates this area by different laws and also of course funding for this kind of technology that we introduce in healthcare and social care and here also comes the companies the business in this area and also the civil society and stakeholders it's also about needs but it's also about the proactiveness in this area this work and also to know about what is available so this was discussed at the conference in Norway two weeks ago and we also involved the audience to by asking them what collaboration they would prefer and also why we should do it and we had invited the multinational company Atea Norway and Atea Finland to share their experiences of incorporating research into their operations and we ended the session with a panel discussion with representatives from both academia and the business sector discussing opportunities and barriers for collaboration in scaling up the use of health and welfare technology and during that session it was highlighted that the business sector finds it challenging to navigate research and its results as they often appear siloed and fragmented this situation leads to multiple researchers working on the same issues without being aware of each other resulting in numerous pilots and ineffective use of resources representatives from the business sector emphasized their need for extensive research including studies of cost benefits healthc care professionals experiences with technology how services can be organized and end users experiences however they noted that customers rarely request research results and many are more concerned with today's solution than those of tomorrow furthermore it was pointed out that many companies especially small ones have limited resources to connect with research environments and find relevant studies at the same time many researchers are hesitant to align too closely with the business sector so the business sector and researchers often have different incentives for collaborations researchers may be more focused on publications while the business sector wants things to work and have an impact so in summary the necessity of close collaboration was emphasized by both parties to strengthen this there is a need for a common platform for communication between academia and the business sector and here it comes to the last slide yes you can find our policy brief we produce a policy brief of a couple of pages for decision makers first and foremost but also for anyone interested in this topic with our results and recommendations you can find it with the name in the LUT Pub database of LUT University or you can use the QR code on this slide and you can also see the Protect team members names on this slide and and I would also like to mention that the nice visualizations were an important part of the workshops we had a person doing live visualization of the discussions and her name is Raquel Benmergui thank you very much for your attention and back to Bernt please thank you very much Christine and Helinä you will come back after I have had a chat with with Bjørnar and Stig-H so I recommend all your participants out there to put down your questions in the chat forum and I will take them these questions and bring them over when we are together all presenters here a little bit later and but now it will be interesting to hear from a policy maker perspective and we have invited Bjørnar Alexander Andreassen and to join us here and I'll have a couple of questions to you and here what about your reflections of the presentation and of this project so let's see if we have Bjørnar with us yes there you are are nice to see you Bjørnar thanks tack för sist we met a week ago in Oslo at the conference that Christine and Helinä mentioned you've been very active in this project I know you you have I think you been at all three workshops haven't you yes I've been lucky enough to be able to participate it's been it's been very nice very interesting all the way yeah and an open question first what's your reflection well I think well first of all thanks a lot for the opportunity to comment here and also thanks to Helinä and Christine for taking us safely through the presentations and the projects my reflections as a policy maker so to speak like you said we're part of the Norwegian directorate of Health so we're working to to improve health of the citizens and the community as a whole through targeted activities across services sectors and administrative levels so we're like in between the politicians and the healthcare services and we also have a role in implementing welfare technology in Norway so my initial impression of this presentation and also of the project is that it is very relevant I think perhaps one of the things that that I like the most is the different levels that you address in the Protect project by the way Protect project is a very difficult thing to say in Scandinavian but the combination of user and societal perspectives and the focus on both micro meso and macro levels it ensures that you're relevant for actors in all levels and as a national policymaking entity we're of course particularly interested in the macro level so that's been very interesting to follow especially that level but all the levels of this project and when you looking listening into to elements to consider and key messages that has been presented here do you recognize yourself in this what it brings in the program you have for welfare technology in Norway do you recognize the elements that have been considered and the key messages that is brought up yes absolutely particularly some of them one thing that we have been working a lot on is the digital inclusion and that is that has been also a something that you you've pointed out as something important to take part in to have focus on in the continuation here we have just had I've just come from a conference on AI and I'm thinking there are so many possibilities in welfare technology and digitalization of the healthcare services but there are also many challenges and I think it's very important to address the digital inclusion because it's something that doesn't do itself we can think that elderly people are being more and more coming from the digital age but it's it there are so many ways to be confused there are so many dangers you get fake emails from the your healthcare services telling you to give your credit card information and so on so even though you were digital a few years ago you might not be digital anymore so focusing on the digital inclusion is very important and an important aspect of being able to receive health care services digitally in the future so that's one of the key messages yeah and I just hang on to that because I think that's very interesting and I think we I'll talk without with Stig-H about this as well but I mean we can see it from from different perspectives here one is that there are people that are digitally excluded but as as Christine and Helinä also said by the end of the presentation yes last week they had a dialogue with the businesses with the industry and I mean in universal design and open up making it easy to use these these kind of services also is an option maybe not so often mentioned do you how do you work with the industry and businesses in your connections we're addressing them and and they have a good focus on this I think so all the solutions are being more and more user friendly this is going in the right direction I think but also the ones with the motivation to trick people fake actors so to speak they are also following in the footsteps so things are getting easier and easier to use but it's also easier and easier to get fooled by by digital solutions so I think we need to address the end users and and make sure that they follow us on this digital journey so to speak safely yeah I think it interesting you see between these levels micro meso macro level the there are things that go through all levels when things some example of essential elements to consider but there also one a couple of classical elements to consider so that comes from the different levels and one is from the macro level that is important with the impacts and costs I don't know if you want to comment on that well absolutely like you said initially I'm program manager for Norwegian welfare Technology Program where we try to implement technology and we have to do this in a knowledge-based way and to do that we depend heavily on research and research and results from it is crucial to be able to continue the promotion of welfare technology in municipalities and in hospitals that we are working on and there are naysayers out there there are particularly traditional medical environments that feel that the research has not come far enough when it comes to documenting saved costs or saved time through technology so I think your focus on these things on the macro level will be very important it will be very important to motivate the politicians but also to motivate the health care providers to join this digital transformation and also like I know the Protect project has also been a very important arena to meet to network in the research environments and I know that you also are starting some of you are starting a focus on climate impacts which also is a macro level viewpoint here I think it's very important to to get more research on those fields as well to motivate us to take part in in digitalization of the healthcare services yeah because you're going to be the most integrated and sustainable region by 2030 and we need to work on more cross- sectoral areas there that's important we also see one very important element to consider is what also this project is about when you look at the macro level is proactiveness to be proactive something that very much came from the highlighted and that is more explained preventive care how how can we help our citizens to be more think and work being more prevented and that is very important of course we are all Nordic countries we face some of the same challenges that you've mentioned we have an aging population we will have a lack of health care personnel we need to be proactive to prevent unnecessary need for heavyduty health care services in the future because we will be fewer people to be able to deliver these services and I think that you have shown and you have indicated that welfare technology can be part of this proactiveness there are other means as well we can change the way we deliver healthare services we can have more focus on prevention we can have more focus on rehabilitation but welfare technology will most certainly be a part of this proactiveness so you're very good at highlighting this and documenting this in the Protect project all right Bjørnar I have more questions but we can take them when we all gather together again when when Stig-H and Christine and Helinä comes back so thank you for now and you'll be back very soon and we will go over to talk to Stig-H who comes from the Swedish SPF Organization for pensioners welcome Stig-H thank you thank you were in the first of these three Workshop when we talked about the user perspective and what's your an open question to you as well first what's your reflection on Helinä's and Christine's presentation about Protect well I think they have pinpointed many of the essential issues we have here with the digital future and with all these type of new gadgets we're going to use I think I will highlight a few of them and one of that even Bjørnar has spoken about is the digital exclusion of people and not only elderly people which I represent but also handicapped people and people without money to buy into to that and that is where we really have to do more of it and I'm mostly concerned about the very elderly which are maybe isolated back home and are not out in the society they are sitting there and they met only with the the personnel from the home care systems we don't reach out to them we are running a lot of digital training in my region for now when we have an enormous interest from people like me who are interested in see the benefit of them but there is a certain amount of people that are negative to it they don't have the means for it they might not even be aware of what they can achieve with it and that's why we have the biggest issue and how not let them be on the platform when the train runs and that that's where the social security system will have an major responsibility not maybe to teach them but at least to inform them and that brings back to the personnel that we do today have in the home care system their level of knowledge of this every from everything from digital things to language issues that's a very big challenge to bring them back on the train and let them be aware of what's the benefit of being a digital person in the society today what is the benefits of not they will not buy in all of them but I think we can get more of them because today the transition of social services and health services is moving very quickly into digital ways and we will exclude people we are not and another issue is that we talk about user involvement we have introduced new ways of communication with our local GP or the local doctors which if you're not really trained in digital interfaces you will be excluded and I think this is something very important that we involve the end users much much earlier than they are doing today I'll get back to you more more about that but I want you to want to reflect a reflection that I have have done I've been also as Bjørnar had participated in all of these three workshops and to inform you all participants listening to this the first workshop I repeat that the first workshop on was on the user level on on the micro level and and that workshop sort of set the agenda for the upcoming workshop out of of meso and macro level and and highlighted then and you highlight now Stig-H digital exclusion as a very important area that we must handle and that sort of had an impact on the on the upcoming workshops that were performed in this Protect project and I think we haven't really got the answer how to solve this issues but there are as you mentioned and also Helinä mentioned and Christine mentioned that it is about knowledge information sharing how do we reach out to these people one area that we discussed with Bjørnar is what can the businesses do what could we have more universal design in the services there are could it be easier to use some of the services like could it be easier to use bank ID you've been in the business quite a lot what's your reflection Stig-H I certainly think it could be done we could do much more research testing with the end users on several levels to make sure that the interface is adapted to elderly people and the other thing we have found out is that training elderly people should be done by elderly people we think differently we move differently we are not so skilled as the the younger population so we take it in a slow pace and I think that's a way forward but also to make sure that the support function is there it's one thing to go into to a training for a few hours about using the for instance the bank ID but if you don't use it on a regular basis you forget about the tricks so there must be some backup from the society how to work with this and things are moving now at least in Sweden that we know some some cities have a introduced a let's say a digital service that you can call off if you're old enough and they will come home to you to train you to fix problems but that's just a few cities in Sweden that has this service the rest of us is just fumbling in the darkness so with you take you listen to Bjørnar are here present the policy makers and the work they do in Norway what would you like to recommend policy makers to do what should should be done first of all I think this support functions should be introduced everywhere secondly I think we have to involve the personnel much more those that are out daily to the elderly people which are today are mostly digital excluded they have to be involved in such a way that they don't feel this as a threat to their job or that is another burden on that should be a help for them so they are in interested and motivated to help their core customers or users to be more active in this field there will be of course limitations to it we will not reach out to a 100% so we we can't forget them so there always have to be backup systems old way way but there are the majority can definitely be transfering be more digital and I will say that elderly people are not afraid of learning things or trying out things but they have to do it in their pace yeah we still see we think that digitalization would sort of comes with what we'd been doing doing at work but we still see that there is a lack of knowledge even if you had worked a lot with computers etc during work time and then you be it takes quite a short time to lose your competence in this area in fact and and don't forget that the digital world is developing as well so even we who think we are trained in it and used to it we have our challenge to cope with it think of AI or things like that which that will be also challenge to use that and if you've been following this and you also heard Christine and Helinä presenting here if we go into the research needs and what we need to do more research what's your reflection on which area we should do more research in this perspective I think one of the the key issues is how do we reach out to people we have the digital solutions today there are those that we can introduce today but how to get it implemented and to reach the end user to make them let's say accept it the security is of course a vital issue here because what I hear when I meet with people that are not digital the only thing they say is we are screwed up and they don't want to even try it and try out what the benefits are and what do we read in the papers today or in the news programs it's always about all the frauds and the fakes not about the benefits of it and I I'm a little bit disappointed that there hasn't been more developed on security like Bank ID you're speaking about why can't we there must be ways to make them that even more secure than it is today we cannot come to a situation where there is no fraud or fakes but we can definitely make it more difficult and and turn it around in a more positive way that a digital world gives us so much more especially when you're ill you're sitting home you can still participate in cultural events and read your magazines or whatever you won't be isolated but we have to bring that message to the end users yeah good fine Stig-H hang on I think we'll we'll go on and invite Bjørnar, Christine and Helinä to to join us in the final discussion here that we have together discuss let's see if everyone comes in here yes okay good now we are all here thank you again for being here and first of all I think again you all both Christine and Helinä you mentioned it about the method here I can't really just let that go I think there a very interesting method we've done this through these three workshops and I think that both the hybrid version of this we had to do it due to the pandemic but it was very well we have over 200 participants in these three workshops that has joined this project but again nice to hear anyone have a reflection on what I discussed with Stig-H that we started up with the micro level and had the first workshop from the user perspective and that will sort of set the agenda for the upcoming work I don't know if Bjørnar Christine and Helinä if you have any reflections on my reflection on that yeah just talk you don't need to raise your hand just put your microphone and have have the microphones on and we just talk I think we do like that Christine this is one of the good effects of the pandemic since this was not the original plan for the Protect project but it was successful by that because we could then include so many participants and as you said we conducted it as hybrid we'd have our national discussion but then we shared the results of this discussion and also some key speakers in different areas during all three seminars we or workshops where we conducted this and and as you said Bengt I think it was a good method for this work because we could cover a larger amount of people and also different stakeholders in this area and if we look into the first session where we discussed the micro perspective we had for example representatives by older adults and also representative for retired people's organization but also representatives from disabled people's different kind of organization and I think this was good way to do this work that we kind of merged the knowledge and also in the analyzis of it raised it to a more meta Nordic level in this project I agree in what Christine already said it's not really possible in practice to separate between the levels I think that we kind of touched upon some points from the other levels during the workshops too but that's not really the point I mean or that's not a problem because you shouldn't separate them entirely it's really as you said Christine in the presentation it's really also very much about the dynamics between the levels and that should be also focused on so I think it's it was a nice way that we kind of had to innovate during the project that it was a nice way to to move towards systemic understanding that then covers all these levels and and we also kind of learned during the process it was an environment or participant who allowed us to try trial and error in this area and to be honest it was Helinä it was quite hard work to figure out how we should do the workshops and also how to handle the technology you know the challenges due to that and also to have this kind of process thinking that we start at one level and then we try to move to another level but I think it turned out very well and of course if we should do it again we have these experiences and also so we could make it even better a second time if I'm going to add something here I from my perspective I think these these workshops have been very good they work very well and and like you said it's it was almost lucky that we were in the it's wrong to say that we were lucky to be in a pandemic but we we had some some gains digitally during that period and conducting these workshops as a hybrid meeting I think that worked very well then you could have like you could have some discussions between the countries and then you could also have some sessions you know just on a national level and it was also very interesting to be from the start to be invited in as a policy maker to talk about the needs for research from our perspective so because that's not always easy for the policy making perspective and the research perspective to meet but you facilitated that from the start and that I think is it makes this more useful it's a more useful approach from my and our point of view so that worked very well I think okay I'll jump in right to the chat because we have had questions from the chat it's from Rannveig on Iceland who wonders if there's a big difference between services for the disabled and the elderly for the rest of you here in Iceland whether it's digital service or not services for disabled are light years ahead of services for the elderly so it differs a lot on Iceland you have any reflection on that from Sweden Finland and Norway yeah I have some reflections where I can refer to my time when I worked in Eskilstuna municipality the organization is that there is an elderly care organization in the municipality and there is an LSS organisation is about the people with disabilities and from my experience both the staff and the people with the disabilities are a bit more on their toes so to say more interested and or more eager to include this kind of technology in their everyday life I don't know the reasons for that may maybe that the the staff have a more perspective that they should support the the persons with disability for example with intellectual disability in their daily life to be independent and this is one of the main expectation of health and welfare technology to support people to be more independent or maybe to to stay independent during the life so my experience is the opposite to Rannveig that I think the organizations working with people with disability are beforehead compared to elderly care could that be depend on the volume of caretakers you have it can be that but I think it might also be based on on different attitudes in the organization and also the staffs attitudes towards using technology for to support the people they care for their independence yes it's an interesting question and and it's not I think of course some of the disabled of a younger age group in Norway we use more resources on them so that is true when it comes to the digitalization of the services or using technology I don't really think it's easier or more emphasis on that group so I agree with Christine here it's in Norway I think perhaps there is more awareness and is more straightforward to implement welfare technology in the services for the elderly and I think there are different reasons for this but one of the reasons I think is perhaps that younger disabled patient and users they're moving between sectors they get health care services they are at school kindergarten work the social sector sometimes it's very difficult to have technology that works on all sectors and all platforms and arenas so it gets more complex so in our experience it's it's more complex and more difficult to implement welfare technology for that group it can be than for for the elderly so so yeah the emphasis on resources is high on that group but not necessarily easier to implement welfare technology for it yes from the Finnish perspective I maybe find it a bit difficult to compare the the practical services because we haven't done so much research on services for people with disabilities actually but I would say that there is generally more interest or let's say higher hopes towards technology use in services for older people and quite often those hopes are maybe a bit unrealistic too because the the challenges are also bigger Stig-H and you mentioned that if you were digital a few years ago you may not be digital anymore in older age and that's one of the reasons why in elderly care technology use encounters perhaps even more bigger problems because people's let's say health condition can change even very radically even in a very short time so in the case of people with disabilities maybe the let's say opportunities stay more similar over the years I go on with a question from Jutith from from the Swedish national association for persons with intellectual disability she says that they are concerned about the ethical aspects involved in the use of welfare technology in group homes for example they see an increased interest in replacing staff with technical solutions just to save money I don't know what your reflections is, it's not a question it is a reflection and what's your reflection on that I think this is a very important aspect and I agree 100% it's very important to focus on the ethical aspects however there might come a time in in the not too distant future where where the alternative is not necessarily continuing giving the services in these homes as we did before perhaps in some places technology will be our only way of maintaining a level of services because there is so much lack of people lack of staff personnel so I agree absolutely we need to take that the ethical aspect into consideration but I think in some cases it's not really about saving money either it's about being able to maintain a certain level of health care services so in some cases the digital Solutions might be the only solution especially in in the not too distant future and and I also think that it's a kind of a game changer here where we might have technology that could offer other ways to have support in your daily life so maybe if we have technology that could support for example a person with intellectual disability to be more independent in their daily life maybe staff not is needed so maybe it's another way that we need to also change our way of understanding what support in daily life is and can be and how it could be given I'm not saying that it might be an incentive that we need to save money of course but maybe we also have to raise the question on a more personal level about the effects how it affects the person with intellectual disability because from my experience and understanding it's important to be independent even though you have this kind of disability so if we could support this I think it might be a good thing but then again here the research area could contribute maybe with this knowledge to to help us to understand the effects of this is it just to save money or could we maybe support people with this kind of disability maybe to better life better quality in their daily life but there are so many expectations but we don't have the evidence and as I see this is one of the missions for the academia to to support this organization with this knowledge from our perspective there is a fear that technology will replace people in the home care but we don't have any evidence for that that has has happened although I think that we have to be open in some areas like say you have a night Patrol coming to visit you instead of having a camera maybe we have to be rather rude here that we can't afford having night people running around to make your a visit instead of having a camera that can monitor you all the night so I think there are areas where we definitely can have this discussion that we go for digital or technical solutions instead of personal but not in in a general way Christine was talking about effects and I would also highlight that kind of knowledge the importance of it so when we talk about impact assessments they should really be done early on before something is even implemented at the planning phase so there should be already an assessment a multi method assessment preferably utilizing both qualitative and quantitative methods so that we would already have information for the planning and then impact assessments meaning recognizing or identifying both positive negative and neutral impacts those should be also done during the implementation phase and and during the the use of the technology they they kind of bring up the users experiences as well and when you think about some savings for instance are they really savings that's one thing that can be brought up via skilled impact assessments because often savings can lead to increased costs elsewhere so this is why we also need this systemic understanding more and more yeah I totally agree with you all and I just could give we have no Danish perspective here but I you could just from my Nordic perspective look at the countries and the perspective they you have had in different countries and in the Danish perspective they are the one that invented the the expression welfare technology and they have always been talking about that it is cost effective you should save money using these kind of services they have left that a couple years ago it's a lot of focus of of more hands in healthcare and social care and what could digital solutions do to make us handle the situation where we need more people we need more services and we need more both quantity of services but also quality of services so they sort of left this save money perspective to how can we handle this situation how could we still have the same quality and quantity in our service model so I think that's quite interesting that they so clear from Danish perspective we have another question I think is Ulrica from Gothenburg here comes the question we often get asked why we in the municipality driven healthcare aren't using welfare technology in a wider range what does the science say today yeah I think the science say says the same thing there are a lot of pilot studies and when the project money is used the pilots is finished and it quite often it doesn't lead to any wider implementation of the welfare technology and for example in Sweden there are 290 municipalities and it's all this "kommunalt sjävstyre" the municipals have their own decisions and it means if we are planning to introduce some kind of new technology we have 290 ways to do it and all of them need to do their own evaluations so there are some systemic challenges in these areas as well we are looking very much into Finland how you work in this area now I think it's important to toget the local citizens to work closer to each other they are they always claim that they are different and they have to do it the way by themselves but that's yes to waste of money and I think we the government has to be stronger than that if something works in one municipal it should work elsewhere as well why do you have to invent the wheel again I think you also said something about that how to reach out and how important it is with the the good news about this not just the problem so I think storytelling is a good way to work with this and also as we found Helinä in the orient project that we also need to to work with the citizens that they should know about this technology is available then we also could make them to demand the technology because it's hard to ask for something you do don't know exists so we have some kind of orientation task in this area to to educate the citizens what is available and how could it support us I like to bring up this issue that the collaboration between industry and and academica to get things moving to get further say what what you find out in the academic world into products which can be used and I would like you to look upon what's happen
2023-12-25 13:17
