Digital communication offers a possibility to preserve the environment and save time, but how can we continue improving our life in a digitized world without losing the social interaction?
While discussing our roadmap towards a sustainble future from a human perspective, Adam Brännström from Eskilstuna Energi & Miljö, placed the challenge: Innovative ideas for social interaction
The background for this challenge
In Sweden older people are the largest growing group of people and the need for healthcare is increasing rapidly. To withhold the quality of healthcare, more health professionals are hired which is a costly action.
Consequently the county council is trying to counterbalance this by bundling up the primary care units. This result in increased power consumption by the larger unit, longer care transports for people on the countryside, more emissions, as well as more administration due to complex logistics.
Possible Solution – Home Care:
Eskilstuna has one of the world’s most modern metropolitan area networks with a speed of 1000 Mbit per second, today more than a quarter of the household is connected. This enables the city of Eskilstuna to implement an interactive solution for taking care of simple routine check ups, for instance blood pressure and blood sugar can be taken care of via a cell phone or TV screen, without even having the patience leave their home.
This increases the productivity, saves time and eases the pressure on the environment with less transportation. But what does this mean to people’s social life?
1. What happens to the quality of the healthcare and life when the face-to-face interaction is removed from the regular check ups?
2. How can a large bureaucratic organisation such as the city council use this technology to become a faster and more dynamic organisation?
Please feel free to be creative when taking on the challenge, what can we do to integrate social interaction in a digitized world? Do we need to design homes and cities differently, how can we work with robots in the home and could elderly people get virtual aid with this solution?
Respond to the challenge on Globe Forum web: http://tinyurl.com/6kuwf8d
or e-mail: challenge@globeforum.com
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