StemCellResearch

 

 

100 million People in Need of Care
and Their 44 million Caregivers

 

www.myproviderspace.com
by Janine M Lodato
LodatoClan@aol.com

 

The combination of the informal caregivers and their care recipients do amount to half of the population of the USA. And it is the same in the other 7 industrialized countries of the G-8 group of nations.
 
This very large group need political representation as well as non-profit support. They would be a loyal supporter of the Presidential candidate who represents them. They do need help as described below but it would be a simple set of legislation.

 

We must enable the caregivers to do tele-work from the homes of the people in need of care. These are the so called informal caregivers" family and friends who work without pay and provide unbelievably valuable service. There are 44 million of them in the USA Then we could give tax credits to the businesses who allow their employees to perform tele-work style.

 

There could also be major political support for this project by means of allowing businesses to receive carbon credits for each day they allow each of their employees to perform tele-work style. Of course then the business could sell these carbon credits which is becoming a very large market.

 

In addition to allowing the caregivers to earn a living tele-work mode using a community wide WiMax broadband system. The caregivers could also participate in tele-training to improve their abilities.

 

Then they can become field representatives for the assistive technology industry, for alternative energy industry, for independent living home improvement industry and tele-work part time to very efficiently serve these industries and allowing the companies of these industry segments to penetrate markets which would not be available to them otherwise.
The employers of these caregivers  would install an open source  strong tele-work oriented tele-presence system on their web server. A team-work oriented collaborative system like the one offered by www.ubuntu.com called Croquet.

 

Recently in a Fortune article Dr. Andy Grove made some very important and eloquent statement re the healthcare cost in the USA especially of the cost of care for the people who are in need of home based care: the frail elderly, the chronically ill and the disabled. About a 100 million in the USA alone. Medical spending in the USA is at 16% of the GDP and it is the fastest growing segment.  The average American spends 440,000 dollars in his/her lifetime on healthcare. 280,000 of which will be spent after age 65 and approximately 50% of this will be spent on assited-living facilities and nursing homes.  So it stands to reason that if there were a way to keep the people in need of care in there own homes longer we would have a better and lower cost system: we could save $ 300 billion per year.

 

This community wide broadband Web connection serving the caregivers  can also  help the care recipients, the people in need of care. For this user group  a simple voice recognition capable Internet server what is needed and can be supplied by any server far, of Web 2.0, the social Web such as MySpace, Facebook, Wikia, etc.  The care recipient end user is  connected to the Web through a simple laptop in each of the homes of the care recipients. This allows the care recipients to participate in virtual group sessions, visit people virtually and in general get involved. This virtual group participation's can also be achieved with the Croquet system.