Residential Care Avoidance Through Supportive Technology: Living at Home with Dignity to end-of-life.

Background: Working in partnership with HSE services, HaloCare helps people to stay in the comfort of their own homes, even at the end of their life, fulfilling a key system-wide goal of integrated, person-centred care. HaloCare operates across three core pillars: ensuring the safety of older people and their living environments, fostering social connection, and supporting wellness and health at home.

 

HaloCare delivers on this, through digital interoperability, assistive technology and 24/7 monitoring. This agile, technology-enabled care model operates in collaboration with all stakeholders and aligns with the four M’s of Age-Friendly Care (what matters, medication, mentation, and mobility) by ensuring personalised care, safety, and connection.

 

Approach: Through co-design and co-production with families, carers and community services, HaloCare developed an integrated model combining remote oversight, an intelligent software platform, smart home monitoring and 24/7 support. The HaloCare service enables cross-sector collaboration between primary, community, and acute teams, reducing unnecessary hospitalisations and facilitating dignified care at home through to end-of-life. For the purpose of this submission, data was analysed from 11 clients who passed away while connected to HaloCare.

 

Results: The two case studies that follow illustrate how HaloCare support has delivered meaningful, measurable outcomes for clients, families and the HSE. In which both were enabled to remain living at home through the integrated care model, allowing for improved social engagement and quality of life while maintaining independence until death at home:

 

1.A wheelchair user with a neurodegenerative condition enabled to remain living at home until their death, and as a result:

oRemained living at home, as per their wishes.

oReduced carer burnout.

oEmpowered to maintain their independence.

oImproved quality of life.

oAchieved estimated cost savings for the HSE: €36,945 annually (compared to long-term residential care).

2.A client with a complex medical illness was enabled to die at home with dignity, and as a result:

oPassed away peacefully at home as per their wishes.

oExperienced improved relationships and social interaction.

oEmpowered to maintain their independence.

oImproved quality of life.

oAchieved estimated cost savings for the HSE: €57,418 annually (compared to long-term residential care).

The above two examples alone illustrate a combined estimated savings of €94,363 annually and demonstrate both the human and economic impact of the HaloCare technology-enabled care model.

 

Implications: The HaloCare model exemplifies integrated, interoperable, and person-centred care, 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, supporting what matters most to older people and their families at the end-of-life. It reduces carer strain, supports agility in community service delivery and strengthens integrated partnerships between healthcare providers and the client’s circle of care.

This approach demonstrates how supportive technology can enable dying at home with dignity while delivering measurable, scalable results and savings.

Some family members shared:

“We wanted to thank HaloCare for the care and kindness that my father received while with our service and for the kindness and compassion we received as a family throughout his illness.”