What is the situation regarding digitalisation in community care? What opportunities – and, above all, what benefits – does it offer? To find out, a project group from Rhein-Waal University of Applied Sciences, in collaboration with the German Seniors’ League, surveyed a total of 674 staff members working in community care services. The result: whether digitalisation in care helps to reduce the strain of the work is highly controversial.
Digitalisation is revolutionising a wide range of sectors in the economy and society. Experts see many ways in which care provision can also be improved through the intelligent use of data and technology. But what opportunities – and, above all, what benefits – does digitalisation offer, in the view of care workers? Whether digitalisation helps them in their work by easing their workload is a highly contentious issue. These are the findings of a survey of a total of 674 employees in the outpatient care sector. The survey was developed and carried out by Rhein-Waal University of Applied Sciences with the involvement of students and in collaboration with the German Seniors’ League. A total of 548 questionnaires were analysed.
One in two (43 per cent) do not agree with the claim that digitalisation would make administrative work easier. Instead, four out of five respondents fear that it will lead to greater monitoring of their performance, at least to some extent. “Digitalisation in the care sector is still in its infancy and is therefore viewed with scepticism,” says Professor Dr Frank Schmitz, Professor of Business Administration at Rhein-Waal University of Applied Sciences, explaining the results. “However, staff hope that intelligent robotics will reduce their physical workload and save time – which, at best, could also benefit care home residents.” Accordingly, over 73 per cent of respondents agree with the statement that digital, patient-centred technologies improve the quality of patient care.
Digital documentation is now in use amongst 71 per cent of respondents, of whom 72 per cent use it daily during their work. Participants see digital documentation as a way of easing administrative tasks, improving communication and simplifying performance monitoring. Digital applications for providing supplementary services relating to daily living and household management, on the other hand, play only a minor role in practice. Only one in ten respondents has a digital solution in this area.
In principle, therefore, digitalisation offers the potential to reduce the workload of carers. Despite limiting factors such as a constant workload and potential performance monitoring, the perceived benefits and willingness to adopt digital solutions are very high. “So far, the focus of digitalisation has been on optimising existing processes; however, due to issues with user-friendliness and usability, this is only perceived to a limited extent as a relief for staff,” summarises Professor Schmitz. “The fact that digitalisation also enables additional services to be provided without administrative effort is still largely not properly recognised,” says Schmitz: “There is still a great deal of potential for innovation for the benefit of all those involved.”
