DEVELOPMENT OF A WEB-PLATFORM FOR COOPERATIVES - A NEW MODEL FOR OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY IN HEALTH CARE COLLABORATION

Background: Due to the inevitable demographic development, dignified ageing and caregiving is becoming a relevant topic in the future. To provide sustainable ways in organizing care of elderly people, future health care models... [ view full abstract ]

Background:
Due to the inevitable demographic development, dignified ageing and caregiving is becoming a relevant topic in the future. To provide sustainable ways in organizing care of elderly people, future health care models are needed. The cooperative movement has a unique opportunity to play a leading role in addressing this issue. Cooperatives are autonomous associations of persons who voluntarily cooperate for their mutual social, economic, and cultural benefit.
This European project aims to develop a web-platform to facilitate the foundation of cooperatives (coops) and to support workflows of existing cooperatives for elderly people. Not only from a clients’ but also from an occupational therapists’ perspective the collaboration as a cooperative could be an attractive organisational form to facilitate their workflows in future.
Method:
We conducted a qualitative study with 6 focus groups to identify potential stakeholders’ needs for a web-platform for coops for elderly people. Data were collected from 3 different perspectives: care providers, care receivers and informal care givers in Slovenia and Switzerland 2015.
Results:
Participants identified requirements for the platform e.g. individual contact (helpline), coordination of services; app-usage is preferred to pc, explanatory video tutorials, position finder (GPS) and user-friendly accessibility.
Conclusion:
The majority of current target group is less familiar in using ICT. Nevertheless, they are open-minded regarding platform-usage.
Application to Practice:
Cooperatives offer high potential for clients’ needs and OTs’ could benefit from this new way of collaboration as a coop. Therefore this platform can be an essential tool for innovative health care models.