Key users and the creation of everyday relations with digital technologies in care

The introduction of new technologies in care is not a smooth process, bringing new challenges, the need to adapt, and changes in work routines and carer–care receiver relationships. These changes, coming from an emerging new regime of digitalised care, are often met with reluctance and suspicion both by carers and care receivers. This results in slowing down the process, and, at times, the complete jeopardy of top-down organisational efforts to introduce new technologies. This study presents a case of Dutch carers providing care to older adults, who voluntarily support the introduction and use of digital technologies implemented by their organisations from above. We applied qualitative research methods, and present findings based on 11 semi-structured interviews with professional care providers regarding supportive work examples, such as external information absorption, sharing information and learning about the use of digital tools with colleagues, proactive engagement in resolving emerging frictions, and adjusting new technologies to specific care provision needs. Theoretically, our study builds on the relational approach to the care, which focuses on everyday practices and relations co-producing interdependence of carers, care receivers, and their socio-material worlds. We argue that the work by key user carers is a crucial driver for the successful adoption of new digital technologies in care practice. • Digitalisation of elderly care comes with challenges associated with different professional cultures. • Some care professionals (“key users”) help their colleagues and clients get used to new digital tools. • The work by key users is relational, as digitalisation emerge in interactions of various stakeholders and materialities. • The work by key users is a great example of how everyday practices contribute to wider social transformations.