A consistent finding of much ageing research, including that conducted by TRIL, is that older people want to stay in their own home as they age. Home is where most people, most of the time, want to spend their later life. Homes are symbols of independence and are a demonstration of people’s ability to maintain an autonomous life. Homes, as environments full of personal possessions and memories, stress continuity in people’s relationships with the past, and hopes for the future. Homes evoke and support autonomy, independence, freedom and personal space.
The idea of ‘ageing-in-place’ animates discussions about how to enable older people to live lives of quality. The recognition of this desire, combined with the fact that preventive home-based treatments reduce care costs long term, means that the home is central to most ageing policy. Despite the widespread perception to the contrary, most older people do live within their homes rather than in institutional settings. The home and the broader community setting is the focus of TRIL’s research efforts. Our aim is to develop assessment technologies and interventions that can play a role in shifting the location of healthcare towards the home. For example, the automated system developed by the Dear Diary team allows people to provide voice samples for analysis via a telephone line from home. This could reduce the need to travel to a hospital or to send a specialist out to a home.
Developing health technologies and services for the home brings novel challenges. Technologies need to be robust, and simple and safe to use by non-specialists. Care or assessment models associated with the technology will also need to be developed and implemented. Our approach is to tackle these technology and service issues as we play a role in developing new models of home based care.