Integrated eTechnology: Seniors Care for the 21st Century
This project will reduce seniors’ visits to the hospital or emergency room, while the technology involved will help staff at healthcare centres to better care for the seniors.
Possible Research Results
Anticipated findings: We think that because the nurses can respond quickly when the health of a senior changes, the seniors will get the care they need immediately, before the situation gets worse. This means that we can reduce visits to the hospital or emergency room. If we can show that the monitoring technology helps residents and their families, we will use the technology for a larger group.
Impact of findings: This will change how health care staff look after residents and improve quality of care. This study will allow us to better understand the use of these types of monitoring technologies and thus improve ways to implement these technologies to other facilities. Ultimately, the monitoring technology can help to keep seniors in their homes longer and give family caregivers peace of mind, and thus delay their transition to long-term care.
About the Project
Technology can help older people to live more independently and to be safer. We will test and confirm new technology with seniors that live in a care centre. The technology will help staff to monitor seniors’ health and care (such as blood pressure and medication taken), and will inform staff if a senior’s health changes or is at risk. Nurses at the care centre can monitor all the information very quickly and can tell family members if a senior’s health changes.
The project is new in two ways. First, we monitor a range of things such as blood pressure, activity and medication use, and all the data is stored in one electronic record. Second, nurses at the care centre can oversee the data around the clock, which means they can monitor any changes in a senior’s health and functioning right away, allowing them to act very quickly and avoid delays in treatment.
For more details on the project rationale, hypothesis, objectives and research plan, click here.
Project Team
Principal Investigator:
Esther Suter, PhD, MSW — University of Calgary
Co-Investigators:
Pierre Boulanger, PhD — University of Alberta
Siegrid Deutschlander, PhD — Alberta Health Services
Janet McElhaney, PhD — Advanced Medical Research Institute of Canada
Cheryl Sadowski, PhD — University of Alberta
Knowledge Users and Partners:
Oliver Christenson — Whitehorn Village Retirement Community
Carmen Grabusic, MA — Alberta Health
Harvinder Johal, BSc — Catalyst Healthcare Ltd.
Cindy Rota, LPN — Whitehorn Village Retirement Community
Tracy Ruptash, BScOT — Alberta Health Services
James Silvius, MD — Alberta Health Services
Project Contact: Esther Suter — esther.suter@ahs.ca
CAT 2015-02
This project will reduce seniors’ visits to the hospital or emergency room, while the technology involved will help staff at healthcare centres to better care for the seniors.
Principal Investigator
Esther Suter, PhD, MSW — University of Calgary
Rationale: Some studies have used monitoring technology to check seniors’ health and they have shown positive results. Our project is new in two ways. First, we monitor a range of things such as blood pressure, activity and medication use and all the data is stored in one electronic record. Second, nurses at the care centre can oversee the data around the clock.
Hypothesis: We hypothesize that monitoring of residents around the clock will help staff at the centre better care for the seniors.
Objectives: We will test new monitoring technology with seniors that live in a care centre. We want to find out if this technology can improve the quality and safety of care for seniors.
Research plan: We will test the technology with 30 seniors at an assisted living facility in Calgary, Alberta. The new technology will track things like movement, falls, blood pressure or heart rate. Nurses will receive an alarm when data fall outside of a healthy range and respond very quickly. We will discuss with staff, seniors and their families how they like the technology and if it helps to give better and safer care.