• care technology
• long-term care
• Norway
• qualitative research

In the last few years, unprecedented challenges and new social risks are testing the capacity of welfare policies implemented by many European countries to provide responses to emerging needs. The general economical and social crisis brings to the unyielding need for a recalibration mechanism between long-term care policies and public spending, as well as the recovery of different and new parameters of efficiency, sustainability and inclusion of interventions and welfare benefits. In recent years, the experiences of new care technologies based on ICTs have become increasingly widespread throughout Europe. Indeed, many studies document that the sustainability of the welfare services also goes through the promotion and implementation of specific technological devices and tools (which fall within the so called new care technologies – NCTs – or welfare technology – WT –) in the healthcare field. The aim of the research is to investigate the field of the wefare technology, studying in particular the changes at institutional level, including services' organization through the experiences in the norwegian municipality of Grimstad.