Implementation of a pan-European ecosystem and an interoperable platform for Smart and Healthy Ageing in Europe: An Innovation Action research protocol.

As life expectancy continues to increase in most EU Member States, smart technologies can help enable older people to continue living at home, despite the challenges accompanying the ageing process. The Innovation Action (IA) SHAPES 'Smart and Healthy Ageing through People Engaging in Supportive Systems' funded by the EU under the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (grant agreement number 857159) attends to these topics to support active and healthy ageing and the wellbeing of older adults. This protocol article outlines the SHAPES project's objectives and aims, methods, structure, and expected outcomes. SHAPES seeks to build, pilot, and deploy a large-scale, EU-standardised interoperable, and scalable open platform. The platform will facilitate the integration of a broad range of technological, organisational, clinical, educational, and social solutions. SHAPES emphasises that the home is much more than a house-space; it entails a sense of belonging, a place and a purpose in the community. SHAPES creates an ecosystem - a network of relevant users and stakeholders - who will work together to scale-up smart solutions. Furthermore, SHAPES will create a marketplace seeking to connect demand and supply across the home, health and care services. Finally, SHAPES will produce a set of recommendations to support key stakeholders seeking to integrate smart technologies in their care systems to mediate care delivery. Throughout, SHAPES adopts a multidisciplinary research approach to establish an empirical basis to guide the development of the platform. This includes long-term ethnographic research and a large-scale pan-European campaign to pilot the platform and its digital solutions within the context of seven distinct pilot themes. The project will thereby address the challenges of ageing societies in Europe and facilitate the integration of community-based health and social care. SHAPES will thus be a key driver for the transformation of healthcare and social care services across Europe.

The dialectics of heroin and methadone in Ireland.

In this paper, I reflect on two of my intertwined research interests. The first is my professional engagement with researching drug use and abuse in Ireland, especially heroin addiction, in applied ethnographic projects, generally answering a specific set of questions on how services for 'drug addiction' work. My second interest is the historical construction of 'addiction' and the discursive intersections that produce various kinds of power, subjects, and techniques around this concept. I find the dialectical relationship between heroin and methadone in Ireland, especially the emergence of heroin 'injecting rooms', as a window into how drugs are social things. Drugs and the bodies who take them live in complex moral worlds, not as inert objects surrounded by abstract human creations. These worlds are an integral part of how 'addiction' works and how drugs treating addiction are actually used. Without a deeper understanding of such complexities we will continue to miss key issues in the lives of people we hope to help.

Are patients ready for integrated person-centered care? A qualitative study of people with epilepsy in Ireland.

The National Clinical Programme for Epilepsy (NCPE) in Ireland aims to deliver a holistic model of integrated person-centered care (PCC) that addresses the full spectrum of biomedical and psychosocial needs of people with epilepsy (PwE). However, like all strategic plans, the model encompasses an inherent set of assumptions about the readiness of the environment to implement and sustain the actions required to realize its goals. In this study, through the lens of PwE, the Irish epilepsy care setting was explored to understand its capacity to adopt a new paradigm of integrated PCC. Focus groups and semi-structured one-to-one interviews were employed to capture the qualitative experiences of a sample of Irish PwE (n = 27) in the context of the care that they receive. Participants were from different regions of the country and were aged between 18 and 55 years with 1 to 42 years since diagnosis (YSD). Highlighting a gap between policy intent and action on the ground, findings suggest that patient readiness to adopt a new model of care cannot be assumed. Expectations, preferences, behaviors, and values of PwE may sustain the more traditional constructions of healthcare delivery rather than the integrated PCC goals of reform. These culturally constituted perceptions illustrate that PwE do not instinctively appreciate the goals of healthcare reform nor the different behavior expected from them within a reformed healthcare system. Recalibrating deep-rooted patient views is necessary to accomplish the aspirations of integrated PCC. Patient engagement emphasizing the meaningful role that they can play in shaping their healthcare services is vital.

The rhetoric and reality of integrated patient-centered care for healthcare providers: An ethnographic exploration of epilepsy care in Ireland.

In line with healthcare reform across the world, the National Clinical Programme for Epilepsy (NCPE) in Ireland describes a model that aims to achieve holistic integrated person (patient)-centered care (PCC). While generally welcomed by stakeholders, the steps required to realize the NCPE ambition and the preparedness of those involved to make the journey are not clear. This study explored the perceptions of healthcare providers in the Irish epilepsy care ecosystem to understand their level of readiness to realize the benefits of an integrated PCC model. Ethnographic fieldwork including observations of different clinical settings across three regions in Ireland and one-to-one interviews with consultant epileptologists (n = 3), epilepsy specialist nurses (n = 5), general practitioners (n = 4), and senior healthcare managers (n = 3) were conducted. While there is a person-centered ambiance and a disposition toward advancing integrated PCC, there are limits to the readiness of the epilepsy care environment to fully meet the aspirations of healthcare reform. These are the following: underdeveloped healthcare partnerships;, poor care coordination;, unintended consequences of innovation;, and tension between pace and productivity. In the journey from policy to practice, the following multiple tensions collide: policy aims to improve services for all patients while simultaneously individualizing care; demands for productivity limit the time and space required to engage in incremental and iterative improvement initiatives. Understanding these tensions is an essential first step on the pathway to integrated PCC implementation.

An uncertain dominion: Irish psychiatry, methadone, and the treatment of opiate abuse.

This paper investigates some productive ambiguities around the medical administration of methadone in the Republic of Ireland. The tensions surrounding methadone maintenance therapy (MMT) are outlined, as well as the sociohistorical context in which a serious heroin addiction problem in Ireland developed. Irish psychiatry intervened in this situation, during a time of institutional change, debates concerning the nature of addiction, moral panics concerning heroin addiction in Irish society and the recent boom in the Irish economy, known popularly as the Celtic Tiger. A particular history of this sort illuminates how technologies like MMT become cosmopolitan, settling into, while changing, local contexts.