Development and evaluation of a digital twin for person-centred home care from client and social service perspectives

There is a need for research that can contribute to developing social services and improving homecare clients’ life situations, especially research on welfare technology to develop working methods.

The purpose of this project is to develop and evaluate a digital twin for person-centred homecare in close collaboration with clients and social services.

The digital twin will be a virtual representation of clients, their homes, and homecare services to support individual assessment, planning, decision-making, execution of services, and follow-up.The three-year project will apply mixed methods to: (i) identify expectations and requirements of clients aged 65-years and older, and homecare staff and managers within social services for a digital twin of homecare; (ii) develop a digital twin and its user interface together with clients, and homecare staff and managers based on identified expectations and requirements; and (iii) evaluate the digital twin from the perspectives of clients and social services.

The evaluation will explore experiences of the digital twin with regards to outcomes valued by clients and social services, and working methods.The purpose, research questions, methods and plan of this project have been developed in consultation with representatives of social services in Falun and Rättvik municipalities, who have also agreed to participate in its implementation.

Academically, the project will involve a multi-disciplinary team of five researchers at Dalarna University with experiences from research on health and welfare of older people and their life and home situations, homecare and social services, welfare and sensor technology, and artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Co-funded by Dalarna University, the project will involve two full-time PhD students from the disciplines of health and welfare, and microdata analysis, respectively.