The SMARTech Service
The SMARTech Service is a complex intervention, with interacting person-centred elements, designed to improve the health and well-being of older adults living in long-term care and receiving home care. To evaluate practical effectiveness, our Research Team seeks to understand the range of effects, variability of impact over time, and influencers and barriers to integration and scalability at point of care.
The Novalte Solution
We combine off the shelf and customized SMART devices so older adults' can use their voice to perform tasks, access information from online sources, and control their environment. We integrate this assistive technology with point of care systems to create an age-friendly environment that minimizes organizational and social barriers to equitable community participation.
​
Person-Centered Assessment
The award winning ACT™
Assessment tool identifies the concerns and priorities of residents and helps the care circle connect a resident to local sources of support that can help them meet their needs. Subsequent measuring of the outcomes of these interventions helps to describe patterns of population needs and trends in healthy active life.
Based on thirty years of international research and development, the tool delivers on the WHO guidelines for preventive, person-centred integrated care. Research has linked use of the ACT™
Assessment to improved wellbeing, independence, social connection, and healthy behaviours as well as reductions in hospital and long-term costs of care and an addition of, on average, one extra year of quality life.
Rehab Team
The SMARTech Rehab team supports long term care residents to live their lives to their fullest potential with the benefit of personalized assessment, goal-setting and rehabilitation services and access to assistive technology. Team members build health and social care team capacity with respect to assistive technology, advancing person-centred practice and next-level development of an age-friendly community.
Data Driven Transformation
Clinical knowledge and client information is often lost at point of care in an avalanche of unstructured data. With the support of our partner, Think Research, we have organized health knowledge so everyone can get the best care. Think Research customized tools and services connect caregivers and older adults, help to standardize care decisions using clinical evidence, and ensure data is easily accessed and shared among providers for the best care possible.
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
Research
Lived experience and content experts collaborate to understand the needs and priorities of older adults with complex conditions in long-term care and home care, the practical effectiveness of the SMARTech Solution, the impact of the SMARTech Service on these older adults, their formal and informal caregivers, and to share implications for Continuing Care policy and practice.
​
Figure 4 Decade of Healthy Aging Baseline Report WHO 2020 Decade of healthy ageing: baseline report. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2020. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.
The Capacity and Ability Gap
​
Developing and maintaining functional ability is key to staying healthy as we get older.
​
In 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) presented a public health framework to spark action for older people of all capabilities and levels of health with the goal of maximizing their functional ability.
​
Broadening the scope of Rehabilitative Services in Continuing Care
​
By integrating assistive devices, information and communications technology, person-centred support, data analytics and rehabilitative expertise into long-term care, we hope to maximize older people’s intrinsic capacity and autonomy. With greater functional ability, we can help older people to be themselves and do more of the things they value.