A social robot to support integrated person centered care

Abstract

Caring for a person with dementia PwD can be a significant personal and emotional challenge for informal carers. Informal caregivers frequently report experiencing high levels of stress, mental and physical fatigue, social withdrawal and sleeplessness 1,2. Several technologies and services have been developed to support the care for people with dementia 3. Lifestyle monitoring 4 can reduce caregiver’s distress and thereby extend the period that the informal caregiver can sustain the care and support needs for the PwD 5. With lifestyle monitoring, carers have insight in the daily pattern of a person with dementia and thereby communication between both can be enhanced 6. Nevertheless, lifestyle monitoring is unidirectional without the PwD in the communication loop. To support integrated person centered care, we added social robotics to lifestyle monitoring in the European eWare project 7 to support bidirectional communication. Furthermore, the lifestyle monitoring sensors add context awareness to the social robot and the social robot provides an interface between the PwD and the informal carer. With increasing context awareness, the social robot can provide context relevant suggestions to the PwD, yet, it is unknown which suggestions are most appropriate and effective. To gain an insight in these context relevant suggestions, six focus groups 3 with formal carers and 3 with informal carers were performed in three countries The Netherlands, Switzerland and Italy. From the results, 11 functionalities were extracted, rated and ranked with - among others - activity guidance and inactivity monitoring as relevant functionalities to include. The integration of lifestyle monitoring and social robotics is promising and of value to support integrated person centered care. References : 1- Laparidou D, Middlemass J, Mountain P, Karran T, Hudson J, Mansfield P, Siriwardena N. Challenges for carers of people with dementia and their support needs from health and social care providers: a qualitative study. In: Trent Regional SAPC Spring Meeting, 15 March 2016, Leicester. 2- Aguglia E, Onor ML, Trevisiol M, Negro C, Saina M, Maso E. Stress in the caregivers of Alzheimer's patients: An experimental investigation in ltaly. American journal of Alzheimer's Disease and other Dementias 2004;194:248-252; doi: 10.1177/153331750401900403 3. Susanna Spinsante, Ennio Gambi, Laura Raffaeli, Laura Montanini, Luca Paciello, Roberta Bevilacqua, Carlos Chiatti, Lorena Rossi. Technology-based assistance of people with dementia: state of the art, open challenges, and future developments in Human Monitoring, Smart Health and Assisted Living: Techniques and Technologies, pg.55, IET. 2017 4. Scalise, L., Pietroni, F., Casaccia, S., Revel, G. M., Monteriu, A., Prist, M., ... & Pescosolido, L. Implementation of an “at-home” e-health system using heterogeneous devices. In Smart Cities Conference ISC2, 2016 IEEE International pp. 1-4. IEEE. 2016, September. 5. Bhattacharyya, S., & Benbow, S.M. Assistive Technologies and the Carers of People with Dementia: Empowerment and Connection. International Journal of Reliable and Quality E-Healthcare IJRQEH, 2016;51:45-59. 6. Nap, H.H., Lukkien D.R.M., Cornelisse C.C. Leefstijlmonitoring in Friesland. Longitudinaal onderzoek naar de impact van leefstijlmonitoring op mantelzorgers en de zorg voor mensen met dementie, september 2016, Vilans. 2016 7. Retrieved, December 15, 2017, available from: https://aal-eware.eu/wp/