Liverpool Telecare Pilot: telecare as an information tool

The role of telecare systems is normally seen as identifying, and drawing attention to, situations of concern in the homes of service users. While this may currently be the primary reason for deploying such systems, the scope of telecare should not be limited to such an alarm generation role. The role of telecare in enhancing community-based care provision may be broadened by using similar, or identical, technology for providing relevant information to the carers of service users. In this paper we present a technical overview and discussion of an information provision approach to telecare which was trialled as one aspect of a pilot service in Liverpool, UK. The service used data collected by the telecare system to produce visual daily behavioural profiles and presented these to carers. The recipients for these profiles included social workers, occupational therapists and relatives of the service users. In this paper we discuss the visual profiles together with the benefits offered by such an information provision approach, including the perspective of a occupational therapist based in Liverpool.