ABSTRACT
This chapter examines existing theories about how people experience and use space and considers how these might be applied to studying the impact of telecare on spatial practices. Most health providers in the UK have devised procedures the Single Assessment Process in England, the Unified Assessment Process in Wales, and the Single Source Assessment in Scotland for deciding if a person would benefit from a telecare installation in her home. The impact of telecare on the way people use their homes should be of particular interest to architects and building designers and yet this is rarely discussed in the literature, which tends to focus on the immediate interaction between the user and specific devices. Telecare installations have the ability to change both the properties of the environment and the effectivities of people inhabiting the environment. Most telecare systems usually consist of one or more of following basic technologies, which are often combined in a single device: sensors, agents and actuators.
