Future of an Ageing Population

6.4 Medical and assistive technologies
Technology is likely to play an increasingly important role in providing health and
care support, and in connecting people. This may include the mainstreaming
of technology-enabled care services, for example home health monitoring
tools, the use of social media to create and sustain online communities with
shared interests and the increasing and more sophisticated use of health data
to improve clinical treatments 177 .
The rapid evolution of medical and assistive technologies makes predicting the
scale of their impact difficult 186 . The speed of development also creates a need
for new methods of evaluation of these technologies 177 . While technologies
that assist in health and care could be significant contributors to the growth in
expenditures in these sectors in the short term, they could potentially reduce
costs significantly in the medium and long-terms. These savings will depend
on the type of technology, for example whether they treat symptoms, prevent
disease, change behaviour, radically innovate or incrementally improve, and
how they are implemented 187,188 .
Developments such as 3D-printed joints and organs, therapeutic robotics
and genomics have great potential to improve health outcomes across the
population 189 , while improvements in personalised (‘precision’) and stratified
medicine may allow better targeting of medicines, making treatments more
cost-effective 190 . Increases in real-time data collection, driven by developments
in wearable technology and other forms of telemonitoring, will enable
healthcare professionals to provide more appropriate treatment and support
for patients and carers 191 while the resulting large datasets could drive forward
research in many areas and potentially help improve prevention and early
intervention 177 . Technology such as alarms, home monitoring systems and
GPS locators can help carers locate people with dementia, although ethical
issues can arise. There is evidence that carers are already using off the shelf
technologies such as baby monitors and smartphone-based GPS tracking apps
in supporting people living with dementia 192 , but specialised technology could
be more widely and effectively used.
To capitalise on the advances in assistive technology, a number of barriers will
need to be overcome, those being common to all technologies (see Chapter 7)
and some specific to assistive technologies. As with many new technologies, cost
can be a barrier to their implementation. The use of telecare to improve social
and health care for vulnerable older people was judged not yet cost-effective
when assessed 193,194 , and the commissioning of technology could be inhibited
because the public service provider might not benefit directly from the potential
savings 195 . Local authorities could fund care-assisting technologies but the NHS
would gain benefits through, for example, reductions in hospital admissions.
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