Economic analyses for ICT in elderly healthcare: questions and challenges

Abstract

Elderly healthcare is a likely arena for extensive change in years to come, and information and communication technology (ICT) will be an important enabler of such change. Before investing in new systems and practices, there will be a call for evaluations. To date, economic evaluations of ICT applications in healthcare have been rare, and a literature review did not turn up any examples of such evaluations of elderly care. The options for elderly care will often have to transcend organization boundaries, as the point of many ICT initiatives now being discussed is to make healthcare institutions, home care, and self-administered care interact in new ways. Analysts performing evaluations of such complex changes will have to be very specific about such classic issues in economic analysis as defining alternatives, the basis for comparison, and combining different indicators into an overall evaluation.