ABSTRACT
Technology needs to be adopted and used if it is to have an impact on quality of life. This may seem obvious, but there are numerous examples of assistive and other health-related technologies that, while based on sound engineering, have limited uptake in the community at large. Despite the proliferation of technologies and the large number of published studies on technology-based health care (cf. Journal of Telemedicine and Ecare, Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare), they have limited uptake in the community at large. For example, it is estimated that 50,000 households were using telecare services in 2006, but this represents a small fraction of the eligible population that might benešt from such services (Hersch et al. 2006; Smith 2008). Fewer than 200 of the 7000 Medicare-certišed home health agencies regularly use telecare (Whitten 2006).
