ISISEMD evaluation framework for impact assessment of ICT pilot services for elderly with mild dementia, living in the community and their relatives

With the demographic changes and the ageing population in the most of the
European countries, currently we are witnessing emerging pilots with a different
scale of e-care services for elderly. Before further investment for wide
deployment and uptake of ICT solutions in social care services, there is a need
for drawing a baseline for arriving at solid and comparable evidence to facilitate
policy decisions. While general rating scales for measuring quality of life of
healthy adults are relatively widely used, suitable indicators and methodologies
for evaluation of improving quality of life for elderly with mild dementia living
in the community and their relatives using assistive technologies, are under
discussions among researcher and social care providers who are involved in
introducing ICT services for these user groups. One of the challenges is how to
best measure the anticipated improved quality of life for the main user groups
and the socio-economic benefits for the care systems in a scientifically
acceptable way. To fill in this gap, ISISEMD project has worked towards
proposing overall evaluation framework to assess the impact of introducing ICT
services. This paper presents this framework with the suitable indictors,
measurement methodologies and rating scales.
assessment of ICT pilot services for elderly with mild
dementia, living in the community and their relatives. 2010 Networking and Electronic Commerce Research Conference in Riva del Garda, Italy. Publication: Research – peer review