Good practice:

Digital Solutions for Home Care

The public health care sector in Päijät-Häme region has limited resources, but huge demand for services. There is a need to adjust many services to be accessible and more cost efficient by means of digitalisation. Severi is a remote home care concept that cooperates with actors doing on-the-spot visits. It uses e.g. tablet computers, video calls, automated medicine dispensers and e-locks. But: using technology in the health care and social services is not just a way to save money. For the people working in the Severi home care unit, the use of technology saves time and thus helps concentrating care on special individual challenges. This was the case before the COVID-19 pandemic, and it is certainly even more so now. For patients, remote care and technology give assurance that you will get care and support when needed. It is also possible to add relatives to videophone calls, so patients can contact and give information to their loved ones. During the COVID-19 it has been crucial for the risk groups (e.g. elderly people and people with multiple diseases) to have personal health care and support despite the pandemic. It has also been very important for patients to have social contacts to avoid the negative impacts of isolation. Overall, the pandemic has raised the willingness to use technology among patients and the public sector. The Severi remote service includes the equipment (tablet, medicine dispenser etc.) with no additional cost for the customer.

There are 12 nurses delivering 5300 individual virtual visits per month in addition to the home visits. Outsourced device and software budget is 155 000 EUR per year. The service is included in the normal annual budget of the Regional Authority of Social and Health Care.

The Severi concept has been a success. Only a few customers have left the service once they have joined it. Visits per customer have increased, service concept is wider than before, nurses’ job satisfaction is better, and even carbon emissions have been cut radically. What’s most important: quality of care is now better because of the time and concentration that can be given to individual customer. Also, the social networking enabled by the concept has raised the quality of living alone at home.

There’s been a few challenges related to attitudes towards technology amongst customers as well as their relatives and workers. But as no options are given, the concept is widely accepted as a “new normal” once its benefits are witnessed in practice.

The remote care concept is easily transferable. Many solutions have been in use across Europe, and from the SEVERI case a lot can be learned, especially in terms of a hybrid concept where personal human touch and digital solutions can be successfully combined. Internally in the regional social and health service, the concept is being adopted outside home care to other sectors, e.g. in psycho-social rehabilitation, memory patients, and physiotherapy.