Samenvatting

By studying the population pyramid of the Netherlands, two notable trends can be observed: the increase in 'grey pressure ' (population 65 and older, the upcoming 'baby boom generation ') and the decrease in the number of babies born. These trends are noticeable in the spectrum of care, where the population of elderly people in need of care keeps growing, and besides that suffers from structural labour problems. There are too little (qualified) nurses to be able to take care of the current and future generation of dependent elderly. Places in nursing homes are becoming scarce, waiting lists are growing and, as a result of that, older people continue to live longer at home. On the other hand, the Netherlands is also rapidly digitising. The spectrum of care only seems to lag behind, but opportunities for home automation or even robotics are becoming increasingly important because of the problem of employment. Through financial support from the Government and by adopting the Wet Zorg en Dwang (EN: Care and Coercion Act), which comes into effect on 1 January 2020, which limits the degree of freedom restriction, it does not seem to be the question whether technology will play a more significant role, but when and how technology will play that role in elderly care organisations.
 
One of the strengths according to the deployment of technology is to increase the quality of care, which in turn could influence the quality of life for the clients. Many nursing care organisations often write the latter as a starting point for the organisation: giving clients a lovely last day. But what exactly does the quality of life contain? No definition of 'quality of life ' has been found with a consensus. Many current definitions only contain an enumeration of all constituent dimensions and elements of 'quality of life '. Examples of this are physical health, psycho-social well-being and functioning, independence, control over life, material circumstances and the external environment. The study aims to gain insight into the relationship between the deployment of home automation and the quality of care in elderly care. Also, the roles of FREM and Care have been studied in more detail according to the use and deployment of home automation.
 
The research 'smart nursing care ' is based on a qualitative research method: an explorative study. A qualitative study differs from a quantitative study by being able to do more in-depth research on a small number of research objects. The main reason to choose for a qualitative research method is to explore a relatively unknown (new) area when it comes to smart deployment and management of technology in nursing care organisations. In this research, two different data collection techniques were used: desk research and interviews. Apart from the interviews, guided tours have taken place in order to gain practical knowledge about the use of home automation in current situations. Nine interviews with experienced nursing care professionals, well known with the use of home automation, are conducted. Within this research, a non-probability sampling has been used, which means that the described sample will not be representative for the whole population, but is chosen based on relevance (and time limitation) for this research. The nine respondents work at six different organisations. Of these, four organisations are active in elderly care, and two organisations are experts involved in the field of elderly care by assisting them in research and advice resulting from this. The respondents are divided into three groups: FREM, nursing care and home automation experts.
 
Results indicated that the use of home automation is mainly used in night care. Standard rounds have been filtered out and replaced by the use of smart technologies. Regarding the current use of home autom