Ms Fiona Larthwell:

HIQA's role will be about the wider quality of care and all aspects of the care. If the care was being delivered in a technologically advanced way, HIQA would be interested in that and would want to make sure it was delivering the care the person was allocated. We would not want to see a substitution whereby someone has been assessed as needing five hours of care but it is actually all put online. HIQA would have a role in that. There is currently an interesting ongoing pilot in CHO 5 on the roll-out of assistive technology and this is something we see a growth in. One of the things we have talked about today is the workforce and the difficulties in recruiting. To make that workforce stretch further, we will probably have to adopt a lot more of these assistive technologies.