Statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau indicate that the population of individuals aged 65 and older will increase to 40 million by 2010 and 55 million by 2020, and the population of individuals aged 85 and older will increase to 6.1 million by 2010 and 7.3 million by 2020 (American Association of Retired Persons, 2006). As our population ages, the need for home health care services will continue to escalate as families strive to keep loved ones in their own homes for both quality of life reasons and in an effort to limit the costs of care.
For family caregivers however, the lack of knowledge, training and practice in delivering the wide range of home heath care services required to maintain seniors in their own homes can result in high levels of stress for the caregiver and deterioration or injury to family patients. Despite the daunting demographics, the current health care system provides limited support guidance that would ensure proper training and support for family caregivers. Training on procedures ranging from using a Hoyer lift to changing a colostomy bag to assisting with therapies often comes in limited, office-based demonstrations or written instructions that can be a woefully insufficient support to overburdened family caregivers.
In 2006 AbleLink Technologies of Colorado Spring completed a ten month research project from the National Institutes on Health, Institute on Aging, to develop and test a portable health care support system that provides both recorded audio and picture-based step-by-step instructions for nearly any home health care procedure. The system, called HomeCare Assistant, was designed to provide a consistent, personalized, universally accessible source of information on the services provided to each individual. The HomeCare Assistant system is approximately the size of a notebook and users interact with the system through the touch screen display, rather than having to use a mouse or keyboard. It is lightweight, portable and can be used to present detailed instructions to family members on how to accomplish health care activities correctly while in the home. During this initial project, AbleLink researchers demonstrated that implementation of the system during a three month period resulted in a significant reduction (p <.05) in caregiver stress for eight participating families as compared to eight control group subjects which received the standard agency training and did not use the HomeCare Assistant system.
In October of 2006, AbleLink received approval for Phase II of the project to complete development and testing of the HomeCare Assistant system. The continuing research will assess the system’s impact on measurable quality of life benefits, including the potential to prolong the time in which patients are able to be cared for in their home environments, and on its ability to promote sustained levels of reduced stress associated with the burden of family caregiving.