The eCare Client Impact Survey (eCCIS) - Developing a new Tool for assessing Client Impacts of Telehealthcare

Telehealthcare is an increasingly popular option for health and social care organisations providing care to people in their own homes, principally providing the means to improve both the quality and efficiency of care services. However, the evidence-base for the impacts of telehealthcare in terms of general quality of life , well-being and satisfaction for older people and informal carers remains patchy. We argue that the impacts of telehealthcare lie in certain specific areas not sufficiently covered by existing measures. As a consequence, important knowledge about client impacts of telehealthcare is missing, with negative consequences for related decision processes. We present work conducted within the CommonWell and INDEPENDENT projects on developing an instrument that addresses these shortcomings and allows for a better assessment of the impacts of telehealthcare systems on end users and family carers. The proposed eCare Client Impact Survey (eCCIS) instrument covers ten domains: self-assessed impacts (positive and negative); impacts on the carer (burden, anxiety, ability to care, reassurance, time and resources spent caring); usefulness of the system; management of health status and care; usability of the system; fit with everyday life; satisfaction with telehealthcare staff; service valuation, willingness-to-pay; and overall satisfaction. The instrument was first tested in the evaluation of the CommonWell and INDEPENDENT pilots with about 1200 respondents. We present some of the results obtained by applying this instrument, and describe the future work that should be done to refine and validate it.