Possibilities and problems in the development of home care technology

Limited resources for health care and increasing health care costs have led to proposals to expand home care services. Presently, home care technology is rather primitive. Its development and use have been largely unplanned. Nonetheless, home care technology is growing in response to obvious needs, and a number of experiments in the Netherlands have begun to demonstrate some potentials in this area. As technological developments accelerate, opportunities for supporting people in their homes will greatly increase. The major problem with the introduction of technology into home care is the lack of an integrated home care system that can select, provide, and assess technology. Without such a system, industrial developments in this area will probably continue to be slow.