DiVa – Digital applications for care provision

Period: September 2022 – August 2023

The research project “Use of a digital care application for informal carers and its effects on everyday care” (DiVa) examines the extent to which the use of a digital care solution is perceived by relatives who provide care and their personal network as supportive in everyday care. 

Although households with care responsibilities have different needs and life circumstances, the literature produced from research consistently shows that, often as not, caregiving relatives are confronted with similar challenges – a confusing wilderness of offers for care-related services and advice, and the need to invest a great deal of time and effort organising and coordinating care (e.g. Bohnet-Joschko 2020, Büscher et al. 2022; Otto et al. 2019). To address family caregivers’ needs and help them overcome these challenges, various providers have come up with digital solutions. 

For the purposes of this project, we are using a digital solution that is ready for market. The application provides information about care at home and offers functions for organising everyday tasks for either a sole carer or as a group. Within the framework of the DiVa qualitative research project, the digital solution forms the basis for investigating which of the app’s functions are used in real care settings, whether and who can be digitally assisted in organising everyday care, and to what extent providing information and communicating via a care app can help relieve the burden. For this purpose, the app will be used by around 15 informal carers over a period of about five months. During this time, three qualitative interviews will be conducted per household. To start with, the care situation without a digital care solution is recorded. After that, the respondents will be asked to reflect upon the aspects of everyday care that have changed due to using the app. The interviews will be analysed using the Kuckartz methodology.