LINE OF BUSINESS: New products, environments and services for the Person-Centred Care Model in Gerontological Centres

The existing model of care currently does not meet the life expectations of most seniors. It does not take their interests, desires, rights or capabilities into account and does not address their diversity or preferences.

The current health care and social protection model is facing a changing conception of the elderly. The elderly person is now an active entity responsible for their own care and who has the final say on how they want to grow old, which will force society, in general, and health care service providers, in particular, to revalue the elderly, discarding negative stereotypes and changing their work patterns and systems of care.

Older people consistently express their desire to age in their home, even when they have dependency and need help in several areas of their life.

When this is not possible, they prefer alternatives to their home that ensure the motto "live as if at home," focusing on small accommodations or living units in traditional centres, in order to develop person-centred care models.

In short, we are facing a paradigm shift in the care model, which goes from a design and structure focused on organisations and their safety, with high levels of professionalism and logging, to a comprehensive and professional model of care focused on people, in which preferences, rights and dignity become the central object of the intervention.

This project has the overall objective of creating new products, environments and services to build and remodel efficient gerontology centres based on the Person-Centred Gerontological Care Model, to meet the needs, tastes and expectations of the elderly and promote the development of their capabilities, comfort and wellbeing. To do this, evidence regarding the relevance of environmental and architectural characteristics on the wellbeing of a person in need of support who lives in a nursing home was taken as a basis.

Through this project, products and services will be generated to serve, in the residential environment, the different particularities surrounding each person in the framework of a model change that is actually becoming a cultural shift in care and support for people in need of long-term care.

This project has the challenge of improving health, quality of life and the wellbeing of elderly people in gerontology centres and it is working on various technological lines under person-centred care model. These lines go from researching the influence of the environment on the person's wellbeing to identifying non-invasive activity, extraction of patterns of effective behaviour to measure quality of life, system of objective assessment of the elderly, communication and social networks for the elderly, new food for the elderly, adaptive comfort, light therapy and comfort, acoustic therapy and comfort, architectural solutions that improve people's wellbeing and new materials for furniture and equipment.

The project is being developed in the Psychogeriatric Unit of the central module of the second floor of the Rezola Gerontological Centre.

Funding: Basque Government, Department of Economic Development and Competitiveness, 2014 Etorgai Programme