
Digital Care: roles, risks, realities and rewards
Exploring how digital technology, care and caring relationships intersect and interact.
Technology has long been a part of caring arrangements and networks, facilitating the organisation of support, connections between people and services, and helping with some key tasks. Technology is changing fast, as devices and systems advance at a rapid rate, and previously dominant ‘telecare’ and ‘technology enabled care services’ models (often using analogue telephone lines) are being redesigned in response to the ‘digital switchover’.
New developments include growing deployment of artificial intelligence, robotics and ‘internet of things’ devices in care. These changes have implications for how care and support are experienced and provided.
Our research asks:
- What digital technologies are being used in care. How and why is this happening?
- Do these developments bring new opportunities, barriers, benefits and risks?
- Do digital technologies support wellbeing outcomes in care – and if so, for whom, and in what circumstances?
- What are the social justice and equality implications of these developments? Who benefits? Who is exposed to risk?
- How does digital technology affect care relationships, the paid work of care and employment dynamics?
- How do users of digital devices configure or ‘tinker’ with these technologies to produce outcomes that matter to them?
Commentary and updates on Digital Care
Pieces relating to Digital Care: roles, risks, realities and rewards
A newly published PhD-thesis on welfare technology for older people and their informal carers in a Swedish context by Maria Nilsson, doctoral student at the Swedish Family Care Competence Centre.
Read More about Welfare technology for older people and their informal carers in a Swedish contextHow co-production in research can be radical plus a new collaboration between Think Local Act Personal and the Centre for Care. Written by Kate Pieroudis (Think Local Act Personal).
Read More about Who asks the questions and who gets to answer?Watch it again: On Tuesday 18th April 2023 we welcomed Dr James Wright to discuss his first book, ‘Robots Won’t Save Japan: An Ethnography of Eldercare Automation’
Read More about Are robots the solution to Japan’s care crisis?This episode is a reflection, in Baroness Andrews’ own words, on the recent report published by the House of Lords Adult Social Care Committee, ‘A “gloriously ordinary life’’: spotlight on adult social care’. The report included evidence submitted by colleagues at the Centre for Care.
Read More about Podcast- Reflections on ’A gloriously ordinary life’: In conversation with Baroness Andrews
Recent Publications
A selection of recent publications from the Digital Care: roles, risks, realities and rewards team.
Members
The Digital Care: roles, risks, realities and rewards team is led by Dr Kate Hamblin at the University of Sheffield.