Authors:
Julia van Heek
;
Martina Ziefle
and
Simon Himmel
Affiliation:
RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Keyword(s):
Ambient Assisted Living Technologies, Technology Acceptance, Professional Caregivers, Data Gathering and Storage, User Diversity.
Abstract:
An increasing proportion of older people in need of care presents one of the major challenges within demographic change. The development of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) technologies is one option to face the challenges of rising care needs. Beyond technical and economic aspects, the acceptance of diverse stakeholders plays a major role for a successful implementation and rollout of those technologies. In particular, it is questionable whether and to which extent the use of assisting technologies is accepted in professional care contexts, in particular with respect to gathering and storage of data. Thus, the current study aimed for an investigation of professional caregivers’ perspectives on the acceptance of AAL technologies in professional care contexts. In a scenario-based online questionnaire, n = 287 professional caregivers evaluated perceived benefits, barriers, and acceptance of AAL technologies. Also, they indicated which data can be gathered and which specific technologies s
hould be used to gather data. Further, data access and data storage were also under study. The results showed a reserved and critical attitude of professional caregivers towards using AAL technologies in their everyday working life and allow to analyze trade-offs between permitted gathered data and specific requested technologies in depth.
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