Care3 provides long-term care and elderly care in the Province of South Holland, the Netherlands. They manage six locations for intramural care (nursing homes) and provide homecare in the region. Care3 has Protestant Christian backgrounds and is a private, not-for-profit company.
Several innovation processes are going on in the organisation. A first, recent example, is the introduction of ‘smart sensors’, a digital monitor to check if inhabitants of nursing homes fall or get out of their beds. There are also bed mats that raise an alarm when the patient sits on the edge of the bed. This has led to some efficiency in labour saving, e.g. on the night shift, where 1 person is enough to check the patients with support of the cameras and alarm systems, while in the past 2 persons were needed during the night. Some employees have difficulties in trusting these new technologies that ask them to change their behaviour and to do the opposite of what they learned at school, namely ‘always to check things yourself’ (interviews WC, IT). Some workers are concerned that their mistakes in doing their tasks will be monitored, and that they will be directly dismissed for that reason. The IT manager: ‘then we start a conversation about it to explain that technology is not meant for that … that IT is meant to make life easier for you instead of more difficult’ (interview IT).
Another example some years ago was the introduction of ‘life circles’, areas where residents are allowed to be. Residents wear a wristband or transmitter and in the building there are sensors (beacons) that recognise these channels. As soon as a resident is too far from his or her safe area, the system reacts to this and doors that are normally open to everyone remain closed. The life circle is larger or smaller depending on the personal situation of the resident. Thanks to this innovation, residents can move much more freely. As a result, they feel more comfortable and they are also calmer. Interestingly, at Care3, a broadly composed group of employees chose the system and the supplier. These involved employees turned out to be very interested in the possibilities of technological innovations (Actiz, 2019: 51). Nevertheless, the chair of the works council says that there has been not enough time for implementation by the care workers who were not part of this project group. It needed extra training in technology and in its tailored application to individual residents: ‘after all, some are allowed to move more freely than others, so they need other transmitters, and residents are not allowed to give their own transmitter to someone else’ (interview IT). Implementation of new ideas and new technology always turns out to be a barrier.
