Privacy issues in management of intelligent systems in elderly care

Information technology (IT) is beneficial in many ways. It eases the burden in many cases and helps people in many everyday situations. Today, IT is found in almost every part of our lives and supports many organisational tasks. The development of new technology is often very fast, but the introduction of IT in our lives should be carried out with care. One obvious reason is of course to get it right, but another reason is that IT may be intrusive.

One area where the use of IT is increasing is health and elderly care. Modern technology introduces completely new ways of working, making it possible to collect and access data. The aim is to investigate the use of sensor technology/intelligent systems for monitoring of elderly in their homes from an information security perspective in order to: a) understand the tensions between values built into IT-solutions, different stakeholders’ views on privacy, and the existing laws, and b) leverage development of “secure” and ethical viable sensor technology/ intelligent systems.