Description
Introduction of new technologies in care for older people is not a smooth process, bringing new challenges, need to adapt, changes in work practices and caregiver-care receiver relationships. These changes, coming from an emerging new regime of the digitalised care, are often met with reluctance and suspicion both by care receivers and care providers. It results in a slowing down and, at times, complete jeopardy of top-down organisational efforts to introduce new technologies. The article presents the case of the Dutch tech-enthusiastic providers of care to older people, who voluntarily take the role of ‘change agents’ in their organisations in the process of care digitalisation, by absorbing external information, sharing it with other actors, and proactively engaging in resolving frictions and coming up with adaptations of the new technologies to specific needs of their colleagues and clients. Theoretically, I build on Frank Geels’ multi-level perspective (MLP), specifically regime-niche interaction, and use science and technology studies (STS) epistemology to conceptualise socio-technological struggles between new and old technological regimes at the niche level as relational. In this framework, I define tech-enthusiastic care providers to older adults as key nodes in the networks of actors and actants, which contribute to initiating and stabilising new care practices.| Period | 19 Sept 2024 |
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| Event title | Socio-gerontechnology annual meeting. Shifting Relations: Ageing in a Datafied World |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Vienna, AustriaShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |