A Good Death

In partnership with national social housing providers, Home Group, and with joint funding from SiDE and Newcastle Science City, SiDE Society strand researchers, Angela Abbott and Ranald Richardson, are conducting research into what it might mean to support what has been termed ‘A Good Death’ at home. SiDE researchers will consider whether digital technology can be used in home settings to support care and help sustain meaningful social activity at the end of life.

This is part of a wider programme of work exploring how digital technologies can be used in care settings, particular at home and close to home. Digital technologies are being used in a variety of ways to support communication and to deliver public services. This research seeks to understand the ways digital technologies may (now and in the future) be used to support end of life care at home, particularly in social housing settings. Digital technologies may be used in four main ways: in care delivery and health monitoring (including self-monitoring); in supporting practical tasks of care or in accessing the home; in supporting and maintaining personal and social networks (linking to family and friends who may not live close by); and in ensuring spaces of the home continue to feel like home and continue to be meaningful places at the end of life. Using qualitative social science methods, we would like to better understand how far, and in what ways, technologies may be used to improve experiences of end of life care at home. In addition, it is equally important for us to understand how digital technologies may present challenges for patients, family carers and professional staff, so that these technologies may be improved to make them more appropriate in end of life care settings.