The Service Design Platform for People with Dementia: Person-centred Reminiscence Therapy with Artificial Intelligence in Immersive Environments

Abstract

The goal of this research is to provide a conceptual service design framework based on literature reviews to help people living with dementia and their caregivers cope with the symptoms of dementia through the use of person-centered reminiscence therapy with Artificial Intelligence in immersive environments.
 Dementia impairs cognitive functions, such as memory and communication, and there is currently no cure for the condition. Treating people with dementia requires long care hours and is physically and psychologically demanding for caregivers. Brodaty and Donkin (2009) and Poulshock and Deimling (1984) have found a strong correlation between the caregiver’s stress and the person with dementia’s quality of life, and, in some cases, the caregiver’s stress and the vulnerable person with dementia’s situation has resulted in abuse. Colomer and de Vries (2016) insist that the caregivers’ lack of understanding about people with dementia’s needs results in repeated communication difficulties that often escalate to friction between the caregivers and the people with dementia in dementia care.
 In reminiscence dementia care, the emphasis is put on understanding a person with dementia’s life to find out their underlying dementia care needs, since symptoms and coping methods differ according to individual situations. This understanding provides the necessary information to create a tailored approach that is vital to enhance communication between people with dementia and caregivers. However, collecting relevant personal data from a person with dementia and their family is more complicated if the dementia is already in an advanced stage. This difficulty is exacerbated by high caregiver turnover and inexperienced caregivers, many of whom are young or non-native speakers. These issues make the lack of information about the person with dementia's specific needs harder to address. Therefore, innovative solutions are required to share common data about people with dementia, so that the caregivers can better understand their needs, which, in turn, will help to improve the quality of dementia care.
 How might we enable people at the onset of dementia to collect their memories, with the help of their families, in a smooth, guided, category-specific reminiscence event in a platform while avoiding any of the possible ethical problems associated with personal data gathering? Such a platform could employ the strength of immersive technology to expand the scope of existing reminiscence therapy and be used to store personal memories for people living with dementia.
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