Short BIO

Dr. Maggie Mort is Reader in the Sociology of Science, Technology & Medicine at Lancaster University, UK. She has extensive experience in running international interdisciplinary research projects. She works with medical students on patient safety and medical uncertainty and supervises doctoral students in sociology on human machine relations in healthcare. She has published widely from ethnographic research in health, medicine and the implementation of new technologies.

 

CPDP Conference 2012 presentation

Taking Telecare Home: when solutions encounter problems in place

Technological solutions' to the problem' of ageing are proliferating, along with policy developments concerning ageing in place'. ICT based care technologies aimed to support ageing in place include telecare packages using a combination of active systems and passive sensors installed around the older person's home. But how does ageing-in-place get implemented/acted on in encounters with older people living at home? How does the work of assessing for, installing, and running a telecare service get accomplished in practice? Drawing on observational fieldwork such as shadowing social workers on home visits, observing policy/practice meetings, interviews and group discussions with practitioners, we explore the asymmetrical relationship between the telecare solutions' and the lived realities encountered in the field. We consider this in the light of contemporary debates in Science and Technology Studies around shared work' and ontological choreography. The paper draws on research for the EC FP7 Science in Society Programme project EFORTT - Ethical Frameworks for Telecare Technologies for older people at home.