Care-led innovation: the case of eldercare in France, Germany, and Japan

If technologies (especially robotics, AI, digital technologies) can help the autonomy of older adults (OA), they also have limitations (difficulties of use, disconnection between design and real needs, ethical issues that may not be taken into consideration) identified by field actors and in the scientific literature. The objective of this project is to try to overcome these limitations by working on a better synthesis of social and individual needs and the contributions of technologies.

This project aims to define and implement a process of innovation led by care for the benefit of the autonomy of the OAs with the following goals: securing the person's environment; ensuring his or her mobility; slowing down/compensating for the loss of his or her cognitive abilities; and preserving and enhancing social ties. 

Its originality lies in three central features:

1. It offers a comparative perspective between two European countries (France and Germany) and Japan.

2. It introduces a comparison with innovation for younger individuals with a variety of disabilities. This seems to produce results that are closer to their real needs. We must learn from this and thus go beyond the French partition between disability and eldercare, but also the classic duality emphasizing human assistance for the elderly and technological assistance for the disabled.

3. It places the concept of care at the heart of the analysis of innovation, which leads us to focus not on individual users but on inter-individual and social relations, with their material and affective dimensions. Indeed, the ethics of care apprehends an autonomy extended to the collective. Such an approach must lead to a rethinking of the concepts of needs, but also of autonomy and dependence, by reconciling innovation and well-being, through two structuring principles:

a) The objective of innovation is not to fight loss of autonomy at all costs, but to prevent it and accompany it by avoiding any sudden drop in quality of life and well-being, by promoting the empowerment of people

b) The quality of life of the very old in France, Germany and Japan depends on three essential abilities: (1) to move around in one's environment (to come and go as one pleases), (2) to decide for oneself (not to be at the mercy of or under the rules of another), and (3) to contribute to social life (to remain useful, to deserve respect).