Best Practice Guidance
Human Interaction with Technology in Dementia

Recommendations

Implementation of technology in dementia care: facilitators & barriers

Successful implementation of technology in dementia care depends not merely on its effectiveness but also on other facilitating or impeding factors related to e.g. the personal living environment (privacy, autonomy and obtrusiveness); the outside world (stigma and human contact); design (personalisability, affordability and safety), and ethics on these subjects.  This section provides recommendations on the implementation of technology in everyday life, for meaningful activities, healthcare technology and technology promoting Social Health.
Health care technologies

Make complex health technologies flexible for tailoring to local contexts

Guidance

To better implement complex health technologies in complex settings such as nursing homes, it is important to make these health technologies flexible to existing situations and processes including: the specific context of the nursing homes; the needs and roles of nursing staff; and the timing and order of implementation of different intervention components (e.g. training on specific subjects).

Explanation

Nursing homes may have their own culture and own ways of working. Hence, complex health technologies should be able to fit in this context. The nursing staff may also have varying levels of knowledge and skills and complex health technologies should be flexible for tailoring so that it can be used based on the capabilities of all nursing staff. The timing and order of implementing components of the complex health technologies may not be applicable in all situations, so interventions should be flexible for nursing staff to decide when to implement certain complex health technology components.

Type of evidence

Rose Miranda (INDUCT ESR 11)

Process evaluation of cluster RCT

Annelien van Dael (INDUCT ESR 12)

Feasibility study; preliminary results of process evaluation of cluster RCT

References

Oosterveld-Vlug M, Onwuteaka-Philipsen BD, Ten Koppel M, Van Hout H, Smets T, Pivodic L, et al. Evaluating the implementation of the PACE Steps to Success Programme in long-term care facilities in seven countries according to the REAIM framework. Implement Sci. 2019;14:107.