Support for Informal Caregivers: Use of Infrastructures

Abstract

Informal health caring became a substantial part of our society. In Europe, official health care institutions cannot really cover the required care activities without the involvement of family members in caring activities. This role was taken by informal caregivers for a long time already. This paper tries to bring up this crucial setting into attention of health care community by identifying caregivers’ needs and requirements, mapping infrastructural elements to caregivers’ needs to achieve a satisfactory product, technology and service provision in this area, by suggesting an interconnected health care infrastructure as a possible solution. This analysis ends up in a more complex interconnected care infrastructure consisting of people and technology components, in the tradition of research on socio technology.