Home care technology for family caregivers
December 6, 2011
Hosted by Dr. Gordon Atherley
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Guest Information
Episode Description
Laurie Orlov advises large organizations as well as non-profits and entrepreneurs about trends and opportunities in the age-related technology market. Gail Hunt is President & CEO of the National Alliance for Caregiving, a non-profit coalition dedicated to research and national programs for family caregivers and professionals who serve them. They say how they came to be interested in technology for home care, and explain the services for family caregivers offered through their work and organizations. They talk about the important survey they were both were involved with and what was discovered about family caregivers’ challenges and the way in which they are most likely to be helped by home care technology. They identify the main challenges that homecare technology is most helpful with. They discuss the challenges that homecare technology brings to family caregivers, and some of the concerns it raises. They summarize their messages to family caregivers considering homecare technology.
Family Caregivers Unite!
Archives Available on VoiceAmerica Variety Channel
Family caregivers are the people who provide care to partners, parents, children, brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, neighbors and even co-workers. They are the people who provide care when everyone else has gone home. They are the people who organize the functioning of the home for the person with special needs, and for the family as a whole. They are the coordinators of care, the managers of appointments, the preventers of loneliness, and the makers of decisions even to the point of Power of Attorney. And they are so often people who themselves are burdened with their own health challenges and who may be in only marginally better health than the persons to whom they are providing family caregiving.
Dr. Gordon Atherley
Dr Gordon Atherley holds the British equivalent of the Canadian PhD and MD degrees, and LLD, Honoris Causa, from Canada’s Simon Fraser University. His awards include Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, UK. His medical specialties are occupational medicine and public health.
As first President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, the Canadian equivalent of the US National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, he led the creation of Canada’s electronic information service in occupational health and safety, now used in more than 40 countries.
In academia, he held senior, tenured, full-time positions, including departmental chair, in university faculties of physics, engineering, and medicine. He is the author of a textbook and numerous articles and publications.
Since retiring from medical practice, he’s built up Greyhead Associates, which critically researches the safety, effectiveness and fairness of health services for persons with special needs.
Through Virtual Care International, a company of which he’s President, he’s involved in providing sensible technology to family caregivers to help them with their responsibilities, workloads, and concerns.
Now an activist, he urges family caregivers to unite because, more and more, it’s not just their families who depend on them, it’s also the healthcare system as a whole, as it struggles to meet more and more needs of more and more people.
