The role of telecare in supporting the needs of elderly people.

A literature review was conducted to identify the 'trigger factors' associated with a need for increased levels of care and support for elderly people. An expert panel then prioritized the trigger factors into one of five bands of importance. The literature review produced 2037 hits. Of these, 1768 were excluded after reading the abstract and 111 after reading the full paper, leaving 158 papers for inclusion in the review. From these papers, 102 unique factors that triggered a need for greater care and support among elderly people were identified. The expert panel ranked 36 of the trigger factors into the top three bands of importance. Subsequent analysis suggested that telecare could be used to assist, prevent or minimise the impact of some 66% of these 36 trigger factors and 75% of the top 12 factors. This suggests that telecare has a significant role to play in the support of elderly people and should be a major consideration when re-designing services.