Staff shortages, the pandemic and the growing demand are just a few elements that are currently affecting the care sector. The recently completed project "The Future of Care in Digital Transformation" addressed the question of how digital technologies can support care workers in their daily work.
The project asked about the work processes in mobile care and explored with the care staff of a care facility in a pilot study together with the AIT Center for Innovation Systems & Policy to what extent digital apps can facilitate everyday care. Interviews with nursing staff and supervisors were designed to explore needs and working conditions, and to provide digital apps that are intended to benefit nursing staff.
The project raised the research question of how digital communication tools, apps and tablets, can contribute to better working conditions and make work easier for care staff, as well as provide more needs-oriented care for the person in need of care.
For this purpose, an explorative case study was conducted to ascertain the needs and current challenges on the part of the nursing staff and expert interviews with supervisors in order to analyse the applicability of digital tools and their possible use. Afterwards, the development phase took place in close coordination with the social institution. Feedback loops after the first round of interview surveys of the nursing staff through focus groups made it possible in the last step to check the user friendliness again with the staff in a co-creation process.
The result was that digital apps can make everyday care easier, e.g. by coordinating medication needs online, thus reducing the workload and distances for care staff in advance.
Due to the Covid-19-related restrictions and the associated bottlenecks, the project was particularly challenged right at the beginning. At the same time, this also made it possible to identify bottlenecks and challenges in everyday care and also led to a push in the use of digital applications in the social institution itself.
In the project, it was also possible to investigate whether digital applications enable better and easier access to and interaction with care recipients and their relatives for care staff (home helpers, qualified nurses, outreach coordinators, regional managers) and what needs orientation arises here from the point of view of the care staff. The aim was, on the one hand, to ascertain a need and, on the other hand, to sound out concrete technological-digital possibilities that can make a contribution to this for use on mobile devices.
The project "The Future of Care in the Digital Transformation" was funded by the Digitalisation Fund 4.0 of the Vienna Chamber of Labour. Content project management: Prof.in (FH) Dr. in Stefanie Wöhl, project partners: Austrian Institute of Technology, Dr.in Susanne Giesecke and Astrid Unger, B. Eng. AIT Center for Innovation Systems & Policy
Project duration: 01.01.2020 to 31.08.2021