Quality of Assistive Technologies in the Home Care for Elderly

Due to demographic changes, the number of elderly people who are in need of care is increasing. Assistive technologies make it possible for many elderly people to remain home despite their health conditions, which many prefer. Quality is an essential element of nursing care, and the elderly are becoming increasingly aware of this and are beginning to make high demands. The aims of this paper, which is based on a master's thesis, were to identify quality criteria in the field of assistive technologies and to present indicators for measuring quality. An extensive literature research was conducted for the theoretical part, and the empirical part employed a qualitative survey. The results show that the elderly's contentment and quality of life are the decisive factors for quality. A catalogue of quality indicators was developed by merging the results from literature with those from the expert consultation. To conclude, further research in this context, based on the results of this paper, is needed, in order to support the increasing use of assistive technologies.