Best Practice Guidance
Human Interaction with Technology in Dementia

Guidance

People involved in the provision of support to family carers, such as health professionals, patient organizations, should inform them about the potential benefits derived from the use of online interventions and actively promote their use.

Explanation and example

Despite the potential benefits of Internet carer support and training programmes, family carers are not always informed about the existence and use of online alternatives to traditional face-to-face support programmes. Extra attention should be paid to inform and motivate family carers to start and continue using Internet training programmes, especially in countries where the use of the Internet for health related purposes is not common yet. India trial (Mehta et al. 2018) Rrecruitment and adherence for a randomized controlled trial of an online support programme in India (Mehta et al. 2018) turned out to be challenging as most of the family carers were not accustomed to access to the Internet for health-related reasons.

Guidance

To make complex health technologies more useful and applicable for users, it is crucial to involve all users, including staff, in the early phase of development of these interventions.

Explanation

In developing complex health technologies that would be delivered by nursing staff to people with dementia, it is important to involve the nursing staff themselves in the early phase of development of such technologies. In doing so, complex health technologies can be more useful and applicable for the nursing staff.

Guidance

To better implement complex health technologies in complex settings such as nursing homes, it is important to make these health technologies flexible to existing situations and processes including: the specific context of the nursing homes; the needs and roles of nursing staff; and the timing and order of implementation of different intervention components (e.g. training on specific subjects).

Explanation

Nursing homes may have their own culture and own ways of working. Hence, complex health technologies should be able to fit in this context. The nursing staff may also have varying levels of knowledge and skills and complex health technologies should be flexible for tailoring so that it can be used based on the capabilities of all nursing staff. The timing and order of implementing components of the complex health technologies may not be applicable in all situations, so interventions should be flexible for nursing staff to decide when to implement certain complex health technology components.

Guidance

Consider active engagement of nursing home management as a crucial component when designing complex health care technologies for nursing homes. Their commitment to the project’s success will help to ensure staff have sufficient time and other resources to participate in the new programme.

Explanation

A lack of time is one of the most important barriers for implementing advance care planning (ACP) in nursing homes. Therefore, it is crucial staff gets enough time to engage and work with the intervention in order to properly implement it. When staff is given time to spend on intervention-related tasks, instead of having to spend this time on other tasks, this will increase their ownership of the intervention.

Example

In the ACP⁺ programme all nursing home managers signed a contract stating they would allow their staff to spend time on the intervention. Training sessions were held during working hours and staff got paid while attending these sessions.

Guidance

When implementing Advance care planning (ACP) as a complex health technology in a complex setting such as a nursing home, multiple levels should be targeted, including management, nurses, care staff, volunteers, visiting or residing physicians, families, cleaning or other staff.

Explanation

The implementation process will have a higher chance of succeeding when multiple levels are targeted within the nursing home. Colleagues in the nursing home can help each other to implement the intervention, creating a positive and open environment to learn and develop new skills and deliver the best care possible. In this way the intervention can produce a shift in working culture and attitudes and deliver sustainable change.

Example

The ACP⁺ intervention targeted not only the (head) nurses, but also other care staff and cleaning, kitchen and maintenance staff. Also, engagement of the management was required for participation in the trial. A few highly motivated people were extensively trained in conducting ACP conversations and this knowledge was past onwards to colleagues via internal training sessions. In this way the whole nursing home was involved in the intervention, leading to greater participation of all nursing home employees.

Guidance

Cognitive rehabilitation technology should be accessible physically and in terms of cost, taking into account the mobility problems and the low income of many older people with dementia. To increase the accessibility of technology it is necessary to deliver it at low cost or promote the financing of licenses for people with dementia.

Explanation

Programs for cognitive rehabilitation for people with dementia may be inaccessible due to high costs or difficulty getting access to the location that provides the program because of mobility issues. Technology associated with cognitive rehabilitation or stimulation should be accessible to all those who could benefit from it. Technologies for cognitive rehabilitation should be accessible at home, especially in people living in rural areas or with mobility problems who are not able to travel to a center to perform cognitive rehabilitation.

Guidance

The level of cognitive impairment must be taken into account in the design of technology because people with severe dementia have different needs vs. mild dementia.

Explanation and Example

People with severe cognitive impairment will have more problems learning to use different and new devices. They need more explanation and a longer learning time, due to limited cognitive capacities. For example, the clinical experience with Gradior shows that people with moderate and severe dementia should have the therapist as a permanent guide. According to this, Gradior possibly would have to adopt new systems and tools to become effective in people with moderate and severe dementia, and in turn, allow a level of autonomy of the person with dementia who uses this technology. Indeed, the help of a therapist in the first steps of applying a technological-based therapy is strategic for implementing and accepting the approach.

Guidance

Issues such as access to the EPR system, appropriate training and system development and support should all be considered by nursing homes before and during the implementation of EPR systems.

Explanation and Examples

Access or non-access to various parts of the EPR system should be discussed and put in place. For instance, management should consider whether auxiliary staff should be allowed to access medical information, such as dementia diagnosis, and whether this would consequently entail training in the field of dementia. Appropriate training in the EPR system according to individual staff needs is also required, as some staff may be more experienced in the use of technology than others. Training ‘on the job’ was found to be preferred by many over classroom-based teaching. Finally, software developers should consider working alongside nursing homes during the design of EPR systems in order to ensure software is appropriate for their needs. Developers should continue to be involved in improving the EPR following implementation, as part of an iterative cycle.

Guidance

To improve the implementation of complex health technologies focused on training healthcare professionals in institutional settings, it is important to ensure the involvement of a dedicated trainer throughout the entire implementation process.

Explanation and Examples

For complex health technologies focused on training healthcare professionals, trainers play a crucial role. Trainers should be able to spend dedicated time to deliver the trainings in a specific facility or institution (e.g. nursing home). Hence, they should preferably be paid by a third party or, if paid by the institution, mechanisms should be in place to ensure trainers have dedicated time and training can be delivered.

Ensuring the continuous and long-term involvement of such trainers (e.g. via regional collaborations) could facilitate better implementation of complex health technologies, as timing of the trainings can then be tailored to the needs in a specific context and to the learning needs of the professionals in this context.

Guidance

To improve the implementation of complex health technologies in institutional settings, it is important to ensure a clear distinction of roles and responsibilities for staff throughout the entire implementation process.

Explanation and Examples

To facilitate the implementation of complex health technologies in a, often complex, health care setting, a clear distinction of roles and responsibilities for staff is crucial. This clear distinction helps:

1. the staff to know what is expected of them,
2. co-workers to know what they can ask and expect of the staff involved in the implementation and
3. management to determine how much time would be needed for the staff to implement the technology in an appropriate manner.

Guidance

Occupational therapists must adopt telehealth practices as a supplement to in-person occupational therapy to avoid service disruption in times of crisis. This requires legislation and public promotion, clear strategies and guidelines for health service managers, and finally, training and continuous support for end-users.

Explanation and Examples

A global online needs-assessment survey among occupational therapists was undertaken to determine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on telehealth practices in occupational therapy worldwide and to get insight into facilitators and barriers in utilising this form of service delivery. The survey was circulated in the occupational therapy community by the World Federation of Occupational Therapists (WFOT) between April and July 2020, collecting responses to closed-ended questions, in addition to free-text comments. 2750 individual responses from 100 countries were received. The results revealed a significant increase in the use of telehealth strategies during COVID-19, with many reported benefits. Occupational therapists who used telehealth were more likely to score higher feelings of safety and positive work morale and perceived their employer’s expectations to be reasonable. Restricted access to technology, limitations of remote practice, funding issues and slow pace of change were identified as barriers for some respondents to utilising telehealth. Facilitators included availability of supportive policy, guidelines and strategies, in addition to education and training.

Guidance

To provide high-quality elderly and dementia care, Digital Health Technologies (DHTs) can potentially help achieve the full capacity of Comprehensive Geriatric Assessments (CGAs). In addition they can improve communication and data transfer on patients’ medical and treatment plan information between care settings and stakeholders as well as improve health decision-making. Finally, they can help to share the responsibility of the geriatric assessment between professionals, thereby avoiding overloading the workload of individual users and reducing their psychological stress.

Explanation and Examples:

Due to the higher rate of transitions between care settings in older populations, associated with the complexity of an ageing population and the shift from institutional care to home care, CGAs have become an important assessment tool as they encompass multiple domains and address the variety of complex problems in frail older people. They are considered as multidimensional assessments, using quantitative assessment scales, that support multidisciplinary care teams in clinical decision-making and personalized care planning to meet the needs of older people, their families and carers, focusing on functional status and quality of life.

However, to reach the full potential of CGAs, their implementation should be supported by electronic data systems, which provide relevant outputs and allow timely sharing of information within multidisciplinary teams of healthcare professionals and between different healthcare settings. The use of DHTs can potentially help them reach their full capacity and overcome the data transfer limitations between care settings and stakeholders. To improve the usability and implementation of these DHTs, the following features are recommended: a) accessibility of individual assessment by multiple healthcare professionals and the possibility of splitting sections according to professional expertise to share responsibility for assessments; b) the use of secure data storage, such as clouds; c) automatization of real-time calculation of scales and outcomes with a graphical representation of the person’s profile and health status; d) automatic alerts, notifications and continuous monitoring of item completion; and e) provision of personalized care plans according to the data collected.

Well-designed digital health technologies can contribute to the safety of the potential users (e.g. healthcare professionals and stakeholders) and reduce psychological stress, including burnout and low morale, by avoiding overloading the workload of healthcare professionals. For example, by sharing the responsibility for carrying out the assessments between different professionals.