Is Big Brother Watching You? Responding to Tagging and Tracking in Dementia Care

Abstract

The increased availability of electronic assistive technologies, particularly tagging and tracking technology, raises questions for occupational therapists working in dementia care. As experts in environmental adaptation to support participation, occupational therapists need to be clear about what technologies are available to address wandering behaviour, how emerging technologies could be used in their practice and how they will respond proactively to the ethical issues involved in these technologies. Occupational therapists need to join the national debate in order to ensure that ethical, person-centred practice is used to reduce the risk of big brother style monitoring and to support the independent functioning of their service users.