Look out for the elderly with the Eye on Elderly Platform

Close your eyes, and imagine for a minute to be 70 years old. You are retired, your kids have grown up and even have kids themselves. You have recently moved to an elderly home, because you need help and your children do not have enough time, caught between taking care of your grandchildren and working from 9 to 17. So there you are, sitting behind the geraniums, hoping for some human contact (it has been 7 days since your family last called or visited). What do you do? …

Well, you can open your new laptop, go to EoE online platform and sign up for bingo night!

That is exactly what EoE is intended for, to help lonely elders, elderly homes and volunteers to get in contact with each other.  EoE is an interactive platform, where these three groups can organize and sign up to activities. In these modern times the internet has become one of the main resources and facilitators for social interaction, and despite what many say, even elderly are catching up with the new trend (see Van Berkum 2013, Akkermans 2013, ANBO 2014).

The platform is also a place where family members can keep an eye on their elders, for instance by monitoring the activities they are participating in and checking if they get help doing groceries et cetera. This will make them feel more reassured that their elders are taken well care of in the elderly home.

The elderly homes greatly benefit from being part of the EoE network. Through crowdsourcing (Malone et al. 2010), they can outsource the organization of activities to volunteers and focus all their manpower on the healthcare needs of the elderly. Nowadays elderly homes are understaffed (Verbeek 2012) so they need all the help they can get, but do not have the money to hire extra staff. The EoE platform provides an interactive place where volunteers and elderly homes can connect and work together in helping the elderly. Safety and quality of using a network of volunteers is not something to worry about either, because through a peer-review system and clear institutional arrangements EoE can guarantee volunteers’ commitment and responsibility to the elderly and elderly homes.

If you’re interested in doing something for your local elderly home and you have a few hours to spare in the weekend, and you wish to become a volunteer for EoE, all you have to do is subscribe! There you can create your own volunteer account, sign up to help organize activities or simply indicate your free hours and wait for someone to call upon your participation! Your help will be  evaluated by the elders, and the more and better you help, the higher you will be ranked in our database! So without a doubt,  there are several incentives to get involved (Malone et al. 2010).

Either you do it for Love or for Glory , but the highest prize is of course the happiness of the elders you have helped 🙂

Group 10:

Mirte, Lianka, Francois, Tiberiu, Riccardo and Ben

References:

• Akkermans, M. 2013. Internetgebruik ouderen fors toegenomen. Retrieved June 5th from: http://www.cbs.nl/nl-NL
• ANBO, 2014. Een derde 75+ gebruikt internet. Retrieved June 5th from: http://www.anbo.nl/belangenbehartiging/
• Malone, T.W., Laubache,r R. and Dellarocas, C. (2010), “The Collective Intelligence Genome.” MIT Sloan Management Review 51.3 : 21-31.
• Van Berkum, J. 2013. Ouderen lange zelfstandig dankzij tablet. Retrieved June 5th from: https://www.digitalezorggids.nl/blog/ouderen-langer-zelfstandig-dankzij-tablet
• Verbeek, G. (2012) Tijdsdruk op de werkvloer: stop de stress in de zorg. Tijdschrift voor Verzorgende in Nederland Jun 2012: 10-15