Grant: Team Grant: More Years / Better Lives

Most older adults that are facing loss of autonomy prefer to continue living at home. Governments are also interested in enabling older adults to remain safely at home. Many attempts have been made to design technologies that enable older adults who are losing their autonomy to stay home. We aim to use an end-user centered approach to 1) combine different technologies to augment self-management among older adults with early-stage dementia who are living at home, and their caregivers, and 2) to use information generated by the technology to inform shared decision making processes about housing options among the older adults, their caregivers, healthcare professionals and policymakers. We will therefore 1) assess mobility of people with early-stage dementia still living at home (with surveys and GPS-technology); 2) co-design an enhanced version of the TakeCare platform that combines GPS data with body metrics; 3) assess experiences of users of the new system; 4) survey other potential users and identify factors influencing their willingness to use it; and 5) compare data between rural/urban areas and across jurisdictions in Canada, the Netherlands and Sweden.