Family caregivers are a critical component in elder home care. Employed caregivers carry an additional set of workplace demands that overlay their caregiving responsibilities, yet no supportive technology based applications exist for them.

Through funding from the Dept of Commerce's Technology Opportunity Program (TOP), we developed and tested the first technology based system designed to support working caregivers concerned about older adults alone at home during the caregiver's worktime. Known as the Worker Interactive Networking (WIN) project, it innovatvely offered workplace Internet access via PC/PDA/cellphone to a uniquely integrated system providing a caregiver support group, resource linkages, and remote home monitoring of consenting elders.

The home monitoring system consisted of 2 in. wireless event sensors unobtrusively placed in the home that sent data via a transponder that uploaded it to our server that filtered and updated status information in real time. Workers logged on to their personal webpage to see their relatives status at three levels, each with increasing specificity of information. If everything was fine, they saw a Green "OK", when a parameter neared its' limit, a Yellow "Watch" was displayed and if exceeded a Red "Alert" was shown. Alerts automatically triggered an e-mail notifying the caregiver. Caregivers could click on the alert or any of the non-alert screens to proceed further down for specific information on the status indicators such as when the elder got up, the last time they moved about, where they went, if they went into their pill box, or went out the door.

After the caregivers/elders chose what to monitor, we used a "Nursense" (TM) assessment process to assess for and offer other preventive health and safety options. Endusers were given the control over the monitoring times and could change settings at any time or turn them off.

Evaluation. Both formative evaluation by the Principal Investigator and outcome analyses by the external evaluators at Brandeis University were conducted. The
project received full IRB review and approval from the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center in Boston prior to commencement. Each participating caregiver and elder consented independently.

27 caregiving dyads from 5 companies participated ( 54 in total sample) for the 6 month study. Details are published in: Real World Inmplementation Lessons and Outcomes from the Worker Interactive Networking (WIN) Project: Workplace-based Online Caregiver Support and Remote Monitoring of Elders at Home (2008), Diane Mahoney, Phyllis Mutschler,Barbara Tarlow & Ellen Liss.Telemedicine and e-Health pp224-234 DOI:10.1089/tmj.2007.0046

Highlights: Contrary to some business managers fears, workers did not abuse Internet usage / or have related lower productivity from web surfing; elders did not find technology intrusive or isolating; worker's workers' willingness to pay was positive and levels are included, overall outcomes were positive, particularly improving worker morale.