The ageing population and rising prevalence of dementia brings immense challenges to current and future health and social care systems. Projections for Ireland are stark, with an anticipated 3-fold increase in people with dementia (PwD) by 2043. It is imperative to develop innovative and integrated models of care such as Connected Health (CH) that are resource efficient and support self management in the home for as long as possible, given the substantial costs of long term care. Family members and informal caregivers are the lynchpin of home care for PwD and both the State and health care system have a responsibility to support the caregivers role and quality of life (National Carer’s Strategy, National Dementia Strategy).
We propose that the CH model for dementia care, through use of simple technology in the home and a centralised electronic patient record can link up the caregiver and healthcare professionals in monitoring, care planning and management of the PwD, leading to benefits. We will track the course of dementia integrating the large dataset of health, functional and behavioural data collected in the home with clinical data to map interactions between the health, cognitive, physical and environmental factors. We also propose that CH technology can connect and empower caregivers integrating them as vital partners of the healthcare team, while the isolation and burden of caregiving can be diffused through access to bespoke information, educational materials and connections with support groups and social networks as delivered through the CH system.
We will assess outcomes in both longitudinal and parallel cohort designs, measuring: usability of the technology, qualitative perceptions of the caregiver and health professionals on care benefits of the technology; number of health contacts and use of the healthcare system and comparison of indices of patient (functional status, QoL) and caregiver (strain, QoL) wellbeing.
