We have been thrilled to share our Technology Enabled Service Model series with you across the last several months—thank you to all of our listeners and followers! Today, we wanted to wrap up the season with a bit of a recap, as well as share what we’ve got in store for 2023.
This season has been pretty intense as we walked through the painstaking process of reimagining service delivery models to beautifully fuse the human-touch with all that technology has made possible. If you recall, we began by establishing what virtual support technologies combined with well-designed human services models can do. In our experience this unique combo can:
- Cultivate greater independence;
- Better empower individuals to self-direct care;
- Increase privacy by providing care that is less intrusive;
- Be used to coach, supervise, and train direct care staff who often work alone serving people with complex needs; and
- Provide more affordable services.
Barriers to Technology Enabled Service Models
Unfortunately, we’ve got some barriers to work through. For example, policy making often revolves around having a client choose between virtual support and human support, but this is not the dichotomy that we should be going for. Instead, our position is that we can—and should—use technology to advance outcomes and improve services, just like we did for ourselves during the pandemic. When we embrace this approach we find that leveraging service models with technology can actually help us deliver care to the moment and place of need, regardless of when those needs arise.
Another barrier we talked about was the mindful balance between providing support and deliberate, unnecessary invasions of privacy. In our opinion, cameras will always offer a higher level of privacy than residents would otherwise receive with in-home care staff and Mike dug into this at length in Part 3.
Ultimately, we hope this season has helped you to consider adopting models that deliver a good life on the terms of the individuals served: lives that are empowered by independence, choice, access to the community, privacy, and more.
Next Season on the GoodLife U Video Blog
We hope you will join us next season as we take a deep-dive into what a service model leveraged by technology actually looks like. We are excited to introduce you to our award-winning Neighborhood Network, to spend some more time exploring the features and benefits of iLink Technologies, and to talk with you about what future care models will be able to harness, empower, and improve.
Can’t wait for next season to learn more? Feel free to explore our existing resources and if you’d like to chat about how GoodLife’s approaches could make an impact with your organization, reach out to Megan McKinney Todd at megantodd@mygoodlife.org.
And as always, subscribing to our e-newsletter means you won’t miss a beat.
