Can community-driven care be integrated in the European Welfare systems? Thoughts on the paper

At the conference, @lakomaa finally gave me a copy of the paper, that I have now read. It makes for a great read, I really appreciate the effort to take a high level view.

Some thoughts:

  1. Section “The increasing cost in health care” suggests that the ethics of care is such that cost-reduction innovation is not incentivised in formal care institutions. This suggests that part of the systemic impact of open care might come from reaping the opportunities for cost reduction innovation that the formal system forgoes. This even resonates with the large efforts communities in preventative care that emerges from the opencare conversation. Yet, this is not discussed in the paper. There is only one sentence in the conclusions, but it does not latch to examples or data. I wonder why?

  2. “In this study, the cases are limited to those using information technologies”. Why? It’s counterintuitive, given @amelia’s conclusion number one, “when in need of care, people reach for other people, not for technology”.

  3. Section "“When does open care emerge?” lists some success factors for open care projects. Based on what? How many cases? Collected and classified how? Etc.

  4. The same section makes an intriguing observation. “Most open care projects are organized as non-profits. As they do not have a bottom line, the efficiency of the project is difficult to evaluate, allowing room for opportunism.” This might benefit from some more space and explanation. I do not understand it fully, at least.

  5. I would be curious to include Open Rampette among the examples; how do opencare’s own prototypes fit in your analysis? Is the City of Milan behaving in a way that is consistent with your model?

1 Like