Elderly healthcare is a likely arena for extensive change in years to come, and
information and communication technology (ICT) will be an important enabler of
such change. Before investing in new systems and practices, there will be a call
for evaluations. To date, economic evaluations of ICT applications in healthcare
have been rare, and a literature review did not turn up any examples of such
evaluations of elderly care. The options for elderly care will often have to
transcend organization boundaries, as the point of many ICT initiatives now
being discussed is to make healthcare institutions, home care, and
self-administered care interact in new ways. Analysts performing evaluations of
such complex changes will have to be very specific about such classic issues in
economic analysis as defining alternatives, the basis for comparison, and
combining different indicators into an overall evaluation.