Internet of Things (IoT) enabled assistive care services: Designing for value and trust

Abstract The rising elderly demographic, often with long-term conditions, represents a significant challenge globally in terms of planning for the efficient use of increasingly expensive and constrained health care resources. The internet of things (IoT) emerged as a disruptive and transformative new technology that could potentially stimulate development of new innovative assisted living health and care services. In this paper, we argue that as the human agency and relationship intrinsically associated with care get transferred to the material agency of smart technology, value and trust should be a vital consideration for designing such services. Drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives from the literature on services innovation, design science and trust in relation to healthcare technologies, we present a conceptual framework that articulates various levels of trust among the concerned stakeholders in the service ecosystem and suggests value-sensitive design considerations, anchored on the principles of trust, for future IoT-enabled assistive care services.