Technology-enabled care at home and the challenge of socio-technical alignment: Evidence from Sweden
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Care at Home (CaH) is attracting growing attention as health systems seek to deliver care through models that are more connected, distributed, and responsive to the realities of everyday life. Yet the field remains conceptually fragmented, and the wider conditions through which digitally enabled CaH becomes workable are still insufficiently specified. This study addresses that problem by combining a systematic literature review with expert interviews in the Swedish context. The analysis shows that CaH is not adequately understood as a simple relocation of care into the home or as a discrete digital service. Rather, it emerges as a socio-technical model shaped by the interaction of care pathways, institutional arrangements, enabling technologies, and domestic contexts. The findings further show that while digital tools are essential to contemporary CaH, the main implementation challenges lie less in technological availability than in governance, coordination, interoperability, procurement, reimbursement, and organisational readiness. Viewed in this way, the practical and societal significance of CaH depends on how technology is embedded in wider systems of care, responsibility, and everyday life. By integrating literature-based conceptualisation with empirically grounded contextualisation, the study offers a clearer understanding of CaH and of the conditions under which technology-enabled care at home can become viable, coherent, and socially sustainable.
Source: Digital Health
Authors: Morteza Ghobakhloo, Klas Palm
Institution: Uppsala University
Language: English
Subfield: Health
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,000
OpenAlex ID: W7160612312