Efficient planning of social work through modern telematics
The innovative social assistance infrastructure that has been developed addresses the needs for both the provision of basic care services and making available IST services for the elderly. Using the TV, as the only terminal for accessing the system, an integrated platform of services for the disabled and the elderly was produced. Three major players participate in this environment: the end-users, which are the disabled and elderly, the social assistants and the console operators. Within the SAID project, a Mobile Route Planner has been developed that is capable of providing support to the social assistant in the daily tasks when visiting SAID end-users. Aided by mobile devices, like PDAs, social assistants communicate with the server through widely used GPRS technology employing GPS for position finding.A social worker is the administrator on the server's side, managing user personal data and requests for visit. On the other hand, each social assistant manages each schedule for the next visits on a daily/weekly basis. Upon receiving a request for a visit, the server informs a social worker or a group of them who have been automatically located and their position indicated on a city map. If a social worker accepts the visit, it is assigned to him/her and the visit is automatically or manually scheduled. At the same time, the visit is integrated into the daily plan and the displayed list is updated. Through their PDA, the social assistant can derive information about the user to be visited. The technology is available as a concept demonstrator and it is offered for further development to either telecommunication companies or software integrators.
