My key learnings from the ISG and ISARC conference in Eindhoven 26 - 29th June 2012

Topic: who is afraid of aging? (This topic wasn’t mentioned at all again during the conference talks, at least not in those I attended)
All projects were subscribing to the idea of supporting independent living, self-efficacy and quality of life when growing older. Technology was seen as the key vehicle to enable this (this is also aim of the ISG). The ISARC part of the conference investigated the use of robots in delivering care and support for daily living as well as in construction.

Overall it seemed that all projects were very context dependent (which is in line with a heterogeneous user group ). The technology acceptance model – TAM (e.g. Venkatesh and Davis 2000) was referred to in several talks. Only in one talk (by Bouwhuis on telecare adoption) it was pointed out that a person does not act rational, but irrational and that ‘the actual use’ influences behavioral intention and therefore perceived ease of use and usefulness, i.e. reversing the TAM model.

All projects related to the use of video telephony were related to 'Telehealth or Telecare'. Telehealth always included a button for emergency situations and a service to contact health staff, GP surgeries or social workers. Sometimes personal monitoring data (diabetes, blood pressure) was exchanged or repeat prescription were possible to order.
There was a least one Taiwanese robot, which offered the option (among many options) to video call a family member or friend… this robot is still in prototyping stage and suffers in my opinion function overload.
It was noticeable in the Telehealth projects that acceptance of the technology was quite low and most reactions from the users were "useful, but not for me at the moment", unless they experienced an emergency. It seemed that the cost for implementing this service was a lot greater than the savings when the service was used.
The most frequently mentioned problems of working with the user group of elderly people (people over 75 or in their eighties) were that there was a lack of interest, a type of resignation or ‘engagement fatigue’ (SOPRANO project).

My criticism about the conference
I didn't feel that the conference reflected on the negative side of technology use or where technology has really a place in the older person's life. Also the ‘older person’s life’ was in my opinion not clearly enough defined.
For example, a speaker from Valencia made a very ‘showy’ commercial advertising their stamp of approval of good design for the ‘elderly’ – not being aware that ‘elderly’ in the UK has the connotation of being frail… this may have been a simple language problem, but I feel the conference didn’t look closely enough at attitudes towards technology by older people or by designers.
The world of Gerontechnology seems to be dominated with projects by the industrial developed and mainly ‘white’ countries. There were no representatives from the African continent, nor the Middle East. Mainly Europe, America, Brazil and China, Korea, Japan mainly involved in ISARC were represented.
Even though there was a re-occurring theme of problems of working with older people and technology acceptance by older people, it didn’t seem that projects could learn from each other – I think it would have very beneficial to have some panel discussion where the speakers could have exchanged their views.
Personally, I feel that technology gets in the way of growing older (which for me comes down to taking time for yourself & health, meditate and reflect, feel in sync with the world and give back to the younger generation) - I do think that technology has a place to support care givers in their work helping older people, people with dementia and as a tool for daily living tasks (which would be good for people of any age) and as a tool for communication.