A Sustainable Information System for e-home Services

Abstract

E-home related home-services (including homecare and home healthcare) in China is urgently needed. The population of aged people over 80 is increasing 5% every year in China, and to year 2050, one fourth of whole population or 0.4 billions people in China are aged staying at home. Meanwhile the government cannot afford with a national elderly care system like most western countries as Sweden. This is because China has had one-child/one-family policy since 1970's, and this radical policy has made China step in aged society very quickly within only 20 years, while the same process took 40-80 years in western countries. Even worse, China becomes aged society when the country is still poor and under developing with GDP per capita less than 1000$, comparing to western countries with 5000 – 10000 $ when they became aged society. E-home provides China with a unique, and maybe the most effective solution to the problem. By applying effective IT&C at home, elder people are facilitated to manage their own daily life. If needed, they can always call help from their collective service centre that is located in their resident area and the collective service centre can provide with both homecare (cleaning, shopping, reparation, baby care etc.) and home healthcare (legitimate medical care). Elder people can be also monitored (if wished by all partners) both at home and out door by bearing sensors that can send singles directly to related care providers (including their children and relatives if wished). E-home will greatly increase the security of elder people, release great worry from both their children and elder people themselves, and can be afford by most people. However, e-home is more than just a technical problem, and it needs a systemic way and social-psychological study how to design e-home system. In the end, e-home system must provide with needed services to residents. I will introduce IMIS project ´Integrated Mobile Information System for Home Healthcare' financed by Swedish Agency for Innovative Systems (VINNOVA). This project will continue to 2006, and one of the outputs will be a sustainable software platform which is based on a systemic study of social psychological factors involved in the home healthcare. I will provide with some Swedish experiences and the so called 'Scandinavia Approach' in conducting such complex system to my colleagues in China, and I hope the IMIS project will be also developed in China based up on some feasibility and desirability studies with some Chinese colleagues.