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Housing organizations as suitable facilitator for introducing technology to elderly tenants – Istay@home entering the final phase
As the I-stay@home research will end with its last conference already end of June 2015, the project is now in its final phase.
After successfully installing supporting ICT solutions in about 180 dwellings in 9 pilot sites all over Europe and giving the elderly and/or disabled participants some time to get used to the technology, the project could already collect useful and quite positive feedback. Also the platform could be introduced with various functions to the participants and enter the live test.
Even though the evaluation of the individual products that are tested is not yet finished, housing organizations can already draw some conclusions for themselves and the future of the I-stay@home approach on various levels. Very importantly, it was identified that housing organizations are a suitable facilitator for introducing technology to elderly tenants.
Within this frame, the support network is important for elderly people to agree to the usage of technology. When introducing the technology, key factor is to introduce it age-appropriately, with a lot of effort, very patiently and by offering various training sessions, helplines and a defined contact person for support. Probably most important, I-stay@home found out that building a community around elderly people that communicate to help one another with technology is most helpful and they appreciate the social integration.
The complete findings and a future outlook will be presented during the final conference in Brussels on 24 June 2015. Registration will be open via the I-stay@home website.
To learn more about the tenants’ experiences, you can visit the I-stay@home homepage (www.i-stay-home.eu) and browse through various interviews.
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