PRE2023 3 Group2

Reserved for Satya, Petar, Alonso, Sander, Gabriel

Group Members

Name	Student ID	Department
Satya Dharmawan	1545892	Electrical Engineering
Petar
Alonso Geeksink Antón
Sander Erbrink	1862146	Industrial Engineering
Gabriël van Dijk	1862081	Industrial Engineering

Problem Statement

The increasing quality of life on a global scale, coupled with the economic conditions in first-world countries where the cost of living per capita is steadily rising, has contributed to a demographic shift characterized by an aging population. Consequently, nations are faced with the imperative of allocating increased resources to elder care, exacerbating an existing shortage of caretakers. Conditions such as loneliness and prevalent health issues, including dementia, accentuate the vulnerability of the aging population, fostering a decline in both mental and physical well-being especially if there is no one to accompany and assist them.

Planning

Week	Task	Name
1	Planning and setting up	Everyone
2	Literature research	Everyone
3	Functional requirements
	First conceptual design
4	Second conceptual design
5	Building prototype
6	Building prototype
7	Testing prototype
	Evaluate results
8	Finish the wiki

USE

User:

• The main user of this technology will be the elderly that does not have a caretaker assigned to them nor other people to give them assistance. However, this does not limit to just the elderly, but whoever has a medical condition that does not allow them to adhere to the prescribed medication doses along with no one being able to take care of them doing their day to day tasks.

Society:

• Caretakers:
  • This would potentially reduce the burnout rate from caretakers as they have been reported to be burnt out due to low pay in addition to long hours due to the caretaker shortage.
• Government:
  • The main benefit for them would be that they could allocate less resources or subsidies to train/hire more caretakers and potentially increase more spending on healthcare providers as the elderly, especially those with dementia has a lower medication adherence. Thus the likelihood of coming back and using healthcare services would be higher.
• Healthcare services:
  • As mentioned previously, due to potentially having lower intake from the elderly, the burden on the healthcare services would be lower.

Enterprise:

• Given the current socioeconomic state globally, the trend of aging population will continue to increase unless large changes to the economic and social policies are made. Thus, this can be seen as a growing market.
• There will be a lot of business opportunities with AI chatbot companies as they will be the ones advancing the algorithm for the interaction between the robot and the user.

State Of The Art

Caregiver and Clinician Shortages in an Aging Nation

The nursing home industry experiences a higher turnover rate, attributed to comparatively lower wages and benefits, especially when compared to positions in hospitals. This is exacerbated by staffing shortages, leading to increased workloads and often necessitating staff members to take on multiple shifts in a day. Simultaneously, societal values are shifting towards individualism, contributing to the fragmentation of families due to factors like divorce or geographic distance. This trend results in a decline in the availability of "informal care providers," typically family members. The rise in nonmaternal caregivers, such as nannies or day-cares, not only weakens emotional bonds between parents and children but also contributes to a reduction in the pool of accessible informal care providers, further increasing the demand for nursing homes.

Medication Adherence in Older Patients With Dementia: A Systematic Literature Review

This article conducts a thorough analysis of medication adherence among elderly individuals with dementia, encompassing adherence levels, influential factors, and strategies for intervention. The review consistently establishes a link between dementia/cognitive impairment and medication nonadherence in diverse studies. It emphasises factors like patient characteristics, disease conditions, and medication types as contributors to nonadherence. It highlights the necessity for customized interventions to enhance medication adherence in older individuals with dementia, emphasising the crucial role of caregiver support in this context.

Ability of older people with dementia or cognitive impairment to manage medicine regimens: a narrative review

This review highlights the substantial impact of cognitive impairment and dementia on the medication management skills of older individuals, emphasising the critical importance of evaluating their ability for self-administration through thorough assessments conducted by competent health professionals. Neglecting to address medication management skills in those with cognitive impairment could lead to heightened economic and healthcare burdens. Recognizing this potential consequence, the review urges immediate research into strategies for improving medicine-taking among individuals with cognitive impairment, emphasising the existing limitation in studies focused on this particular area.

The examination of the factors affecting the feeling of loneliness of the elderly

This study investigated the impact of a 12-week intervention program involving interactions with a seal robot on the well-being, mood, and loneliness of elderly residents in a nursing home. The findings indicated a notable reduction in loneliness scores among participants who engaged with the seal robot twice a week, in contrast to a control group. This observation is noteworthy, given that prior research on companion robots, such as Paro and AIBO, primarily emphasized mood enhancement without specifically addressing loneliness. The study suggests that companion robots, serving as substitutes for live animals, can effectively contribute to alleviating loneliness within nursing home environments.

Frontiers | Reducing Loneliness Among Aging Adults: The Roles of Personal Voice Assistants and Anthropomorphic Interactions

The research brings attention to a unique discovery indicating a direct link between anthropomorphism and a reduction in loneliness. Participants experienced a decline in perceived loneliness following the use of Personal Voice Assistants (PVAs), consistent with earlier studies that propose the effectiveness of technology interventions, such as communication tools and virtual pet companions, in addressing loneliness among older adults. The results underscore the significance of anthropomorphism in alleviating loneliness, particularly evident in relational greetings. Notably, baseline loneliness served as a predictor for such interactions, revealing that individuals experiencing higher levels of loneliness were more inclined to engage with the PVA, initiating personal greetings with polite language and adherence to interaction rituals. This behavior suggests a strong desire for connection, highlighting the role of anthropomorphism in fostering meaningful interactions with the device.

The examination of the factors affecting the feeling of loneliness of the elderly

In this study on loneliness among the elderly, age played a significant role, revealing a consistent increase in loneliness among older individuals. Additionally, higher education levels were linked to higher levels of loneliness, likely influenced by socio-economic and cultural factors. Health-related aspects, including self-perceived health and physical functioning, were associated with loneliness, highlighting the complex relationship between health and social isolation. Maintaining strong social networks and regular family contacts were identified as crucial factors in reducing loneliness.

Designing Robots for Elderly from the Perspective of Potential End-Users: A Sociological Approach

This research looks to adress some issues for end-users regarding age-friendly robots. The main issues here were: How robots are envisioned by the elderly, how knowledgeable the elderly are on the robotics development, and how the elderly are involved in robot design. The research uses qualitative methods, notably interviews. Some interesting results were that most elderly rated themselves as capable enough regarding current technologies, or digital competence as the research calls it. However, during interviews most released that they in fact were no able to keep up with the new developments, often also unwilling to try. This study gives a good insight in how the elderly treat and see technology. Therefor it is quite important and interesting for our own research and creation of a product that is aimed at the elderly.

Robots for Elderly Care: Review, Multi-Criteria Optimization Model and Qualitative Case Study

For the first part this paper reviews the current knowledge about robots for the elderly, focussing on service and social robots. The review aims to highlight how robots interact with the elderly in healthcare and social situations. Also events like covid are considered. For the second part it focusses on a conceptual model. As goal it has to maximize efficiency and robot utilization and minimizing the stress for human caregivers. This is a optimisation conceptual model. It first builds on the ever expanding fields and level of robotic presence in society. It then tries to formulate a formula based on gathered data. Finally the study takes a look at the findings of other research papers regarding which needs, requirements and technological adoptation there are in the elderly care. They also used focus groups as part of their data set. Some of the more important findings were that using robots could help loneliness for example. Also that different people had different sets of expectations for robots, even for the robots appearance.

Socially Assistive Robots in Elderly Care: A Systematic Review into Effects and Effectiveness

This research focusses on robot intervention in social assistance for the elderly and its effectiveness. It takes data from previous researches. They took a lot of information from a previous meta study. To improve upon this they conducted thorough quality control on the used sources. They found that from all 2891 found publications, only 17 studies were really relevant to socially assistive robot care for the elderly. These used 5 different robots from which one was undifined. For the results from these different robots, they generally all seeme to have various positive influences on the elderly they cared for. The researchers however did not that more intensive studies must be done on a larger scale to give properly confirm these findings.

Robots in Elderly Care

This study looks at robots in the elderly care. They state that longer life expectancy and lower birthrates result in a relatively larger elderly group. This larger group needs more care from less people, which is why robots in elderly care become more important, even more-so considering rising health care costs. First they devide the needs into some catagories, such as daily activities, physical, cognitive, psychological and social needs. They then outline different robots for each job, and the rules they must adhere to (Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics). The researches look at previous studies on these robots and their impact. In their findings the negative effects are prominently discussed, as opposed to many other researches. Noteworthy worries were the huge data collection that could happen trough robots, and how reducing real human contact influences the elderly, for example by thinning the line between the reality and the appearance of robots. They do conclude that further development on care robots for the elderly must be persued and that it could prove a very usefull tool.

Assistive social robots in elderly care: a review.

This paper aims to check how effective assistive social robots are in the care for the elderly. To gather this information, a systematic review of previous litirature was done. The robots are divided into two types: assistive robots that do supporting tasks for their patients, and social service robots which try to act more as a companion. They studied the same robots as other provided litiratures, partly because there is a small selection to choose from. Studies were once again filtered and resulted in 43 relevant studies. The results are generally positive in all aspects, from mental to physical wellbeing. The researches did note some patterns that limited the significance of the results. For example: most research was done on two robots, Paro and Aibo, thus limiting how varied the use and capabilities of robots was. Also, most research was done in Japan. Furthermore the elderly lived in nursing homes and not on their own, and finally the methodology was lacking, as they had no control over the other studies and how they were perfomed/measured.

The use of care robots in aged care: A systematic review of argument-based ethics literature

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ROBOT ETHICS | The ethical and social implications of robotics

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Ethical challenges in the use of social service robots for elderly people

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Granny and the robots: ethical issues in robot care for the elderly

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Service robots, care ethics, and design

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