Future of Home Care: Cross-National Perspectives

Hein van Hout, MPsy, MPhil, PhD is affiliated at the Departments of General Practice & Medicine for Older People, Amsterdam Public Health Institute, of the Amsterdam University medical center. He chairs a research group on primary care geriatrics that aims to contribute to independence, quality of life and quality of care of vulnerable older persons and their close relatives. He published over 185 international peer-reviewed papers. He coordinated large multinational studies: IBenC on quality and cost of home care, and the PACE trial to improve palliative care in residential homes, and I-CARE4OLD on improving prognostics of older persons with chronic complex conditions.

He is a board member of interRAI a collaborative network in over thirty countries committed to improving the quality of life for vulnerable persons through evidence-informed clinical practice and policy decision-making. He is a member of INTERDEM the world’s largest expert network on timely diagnosis and psychosocial interventions for persons with dementia and their relatives.

Andrew Costa is the Schlegel Research Chair in Clinical Epidemiology & Aging and an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact as well as the Department of Medicine at McMaster University. He serves as the Scientific Director of the St. Joseph’s Centre for Integrated Care, Research Director of the McMaster School of Medicine (Waterloo Campus), and an Associate Scientific Director of the Canada Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA). Since joining the CLSA, Dr. Costa has been the co-chair of the CLSA Health Services Working Group and is leading work on data linkage on behalf of the CLSA. His program of research makes use of health information (‘big data’) to target, develop, and evaluate models of care in home and community care, emergency departments, hospitals, and long-term care (https://bdg.mcmaster.ca/). He also leads work on digital tools for health care, including caregivers (https://www.yourcareplus.ca).