Back Can home care for older people be improved?

Can home care for older people be improved?

We propose optimizing integrated planning of home care services through a decision support system.

14.07.2022

 

Over the last decades there has been a continuous increase in longevity worldwide and, whenever care for older people is needed, there is a higher preference for home care. Planning combined home health services (provided by nurses and doctors) and home social services (provided by social caregivers and cleaning staff) is a very difficult task for current home care organizations. The complexity of this task is a good reason to develop automated planning systems to obtain quality solutions. This article proposes a tool from operations research to optimize decisions in this area. Current care providers in Barcelona have helped in building and testing these models with real data. The results provide insights on parameters and the trade-off between the different indicators, such as costs and continuity of service. The proposed tool is available via a web-based decision support system that enables home care organizations to obtain efficient solutions in an intuitive, complete, and quick manner.

Check the full article published by Observatorio Social la Caixa here.

Multimedia

Categories:

SDG - Sustainable Development Goals:

Els ODS a la UPF

Contact