Search

As the world's population continues to age, elderly homecare has become a viable and sustainable solution for providing support and improving the well-being of aging individuals. By allowing elderly individuals to age in place, this approach can both improve their quality of life and provide cost-effective and socially responsible care. Especially in Aizuwakamatsu City, the problem of population aging is a very serious problem. Although home-based elderly care systems exist, they have room for improvement in terms of efficiency and security. Currently, these systems are not functioning at their best levels, and there is potential for further development to make them more efficient and secure for elderly individuals. The paper proposes a Home-based Elderly Care solution which makes use of the 5G mobile network slicing and describes how 5G network slicing can accommodate Smart Home - a popular IoT application. The state-of-the-art technologies pertaining to Smart Home is thoroughly studied and the findings summarized. The paper outlines the implementation and pilot of a smart home network slicing solution, including a secure and efficient emergency call system. This solution allows for quick dispatch of the appropriate caregivers in case of emergency, improving response times and ensuring the safety and security of elderly individuals. A proof-of-concept implementation is described thoroughly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Virtual Reality (VR) has been increasingly adopted in residential aged care facilities (RACFs) for enriching residents' experience. Previous research has indicated that VR experiences can be especially valuable when they are personalized - that is, tailored to individual interests and circumstances. However, resources guiding how personalized VR experiences should be introduced in RACFs are limited. This paper reports an in-depth case study with a care assistant working across RACFs, who has significant experience in introducing personalized VR for people with dementia. The paper provides insights into vital steps in introducing personalized VR, using available information sources and the opportunities and challenges brought about by this approach for this population. Findings reveal that personalized VR should be introduced with respect and care. However, this could create tension for staff facilitating VR activities in resource-stretched aged care organizations. This paper identifies opportunities for designing systems to make personalized VR more effective in RACFs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In most societies, care work is still considered a private, gendered activity, under the assumption that women would innately perform such tasks. Caring for the elderly represents particular emotional challenges, being emphasised that this dimension of caregiving needs more attention. Building on Arlie Hochschild's (1983) conceptualisation of emotion work and incorporating Tonkens' (2012) observation to include meso- and macro-level into the scope, I argue that emotion work is not only an individual experience, but it has a component in which the norms associated with the emotions to be displayed in caregiving correspond to a frame of reference historically constructed. Hence, this paper aims to understand how emotion work is characterised and configured by caregivers of the elderly in Chile. Using a qualitative approach, between April and June 2023 I conducted 9 in-depth interviews with caregivers of older adults in Chile (8 women, 1 man), and asked them to keep an 'emotional diary' for at least 4 weeks. Conducting a constructivist grounded theory analysis, the main findings indicate differences between the emotion work performed by paid and unpaid caregivers. Paid caregivers manage emotions regarding affection and pity towards older adults, and mainly anger towards older adults' families, which is supported by a construction of old age based on the notions of abandonment and loneliness. Alternatively, the emotions of family caregivers are much more complex to manage, since they are permeated by the existing relationship with the old person being cared for, and they belong to life course decisions. It can be concluded that emotion work is a relational activity where familialistic narratives play a central role in Chile. The management of emotions in caregiving is permeated by the caregiver's options of free decision-making, which are in tension with structures such as gender, class, or access to care support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Care of the elderly is becoming a relevant issue with the population ageing and the growth of nuclear families and the elderly being alone at home. The non-responsive or a motionless state of an elderly person is alarming, especially when the person is in unusual position and at location, such as, bathroom, passage or living room and needs to be detected to provide quick assistance. This paper presents a blend of classical machine learning and optical flow to detect the non-responsive state and the trigger positions of the elderly. The algorithm proposed in the paper is based on explainable AI. It takes in consideration 3 criterion namely pose, motion and context. The nonresponsive or motionless state for identified pose in an unusual context is identified as an alert for assistance to the elderly. The work proposes a smart system with low computational complexity that makes it easy to embed in a portable system. The results of functional and utility evaluation of the system under simulated environment are recorded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the residential aged care sector medication management has been identified as a major area of concern contributing to poor outcomes and quality of life for residents. Monitoring medication management in residential aged care in Australia has been highly reliant on small, internal audits. The introduction of electronic medication administration systems provides new opportunities to establish improved methods for ongoing, timely and efficient monitoring of a range of medication indicators, made more meaningful by linking medication data with resident characteristics and outcomes. Benchmarking contemporary medication indicators provides a further opportunity for improvement and is most effective when indicator data are adjusted to take account of confounding factors, such as residents' characteristics and health conditions. Roundtables provide a structure for sharing and discussing indicator data in a trusted and supportive environment and encourage the identification of strategies which may be effective in improving medication management. This paper describes a new project to establish, implement and evaluate a National Aged Care Medication Roundtable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents key technologies of a mobile service robot developed to manipulate objects around people safely. We demonstrate this ability to support staff in elderly care homes in the future. The take-over by a service robot allows the staff to spend less time with routine logistical tasks and therefore better focus on the interaction with residents. In the selected application scenario, the robot helps staff by (1) retrieving empty bottles from the residents' rooms, (2) bringing them to the kitchen, (3) taking the refilled bottles back to a table inside the residents' rooms. This task seems trivial for a person, but the robot needs to orchestrate numerous algorithms and components to work smoothly, such as bottle pose detection, manipulation, and navigation. A technical evaluation indicates a high performance of single components, but due to isolated failures, the overall scenario does not always succeed. Next to the technical aspects, it is fundamental to determine the acceptance of the robot, which was achieved by analyzing questionnaires given to care workers. Finally, this paper presents lessons learned to help other researchers in similar use-cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While most research in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) studies one-off or short-term interactions in constrained laboratory settings, a growing body of research focuses on breaking through these boundaries and studying long-term interactions that arise through deployments of robots "in the wild". Under these conditions, robots need to incrementally learn new concepts or abilities (i.e., "lifelong learning") to adapt their behaviors within new situations and personalize their interactions with users to maintain their interest and engagement. The second edition of the "Lifelong Learning and Personalization in Long-Term Human-Robot Interaction (LEAP-HRI)" workshop aims to address the developments and challenges in these areas and create a medium for researchers to share their work in progress, present preliminary results, learn from the experience of invited researchers and discuss relevant topics. The workshop focuses on studies on lifelong learning and adaptivity to users, context, environment, and tasks in long-term interactions in a variety of fields such as education, rehabilitation, elderly care, collaborative tasks, service, and companion robots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many areas of rural Greece there exist remnants of traditional stereotypes that were socially constructed in closed societies where the institution of the patriarchal family previously reigned and are regenerated by the dominant culture. These stereotypes have shaped over time the perception that long-term care for older adults should be provided within the family structure and exclusively by family members. Notably, it was previously considered a disgrace in Greek rural society if children moved their parents to a residential or nursing home. Public or other care facilities for older people emerged just two decades ago, except a few led by the church. However, these attitudes have been softened in recent years. European and National funded programmes have shaped different notions towards long-term care in these areas. This was facilitated by the structural changes that occurred in the Greek countryside in combination with the existing low birth rate in these areas and the presence of concrete migratory flows. The present study explores the business environment that is being formed and its potential to unleash the productive forces that have pinned down the relevant residual stereotypes. It also examines the socio-economic impact of the above enterprises on rural areas. Qualitative interviews were conducted with eight entrepreneurs who have invested in rural long-term care settings for older persons and eight elected chairpersons of local councils. Our findings indicate that regardless of financial support towards private care entities for older people, in order for the services offered to take a more prominent social role, the development of local consensus and innovative interventions is required in tandem. If achieved, such care providers can contribute to the socio-economic development of rural areas. This study provides international literature with further evidence on the crucial role of such enterprises on supportiveness towards inhabitants' quality of life improvement while results can be useful for Greek and European decision-making centers as well as potential rural entrepreneurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Behavioural design has been gaining momentum to address critical societal challenges such as elderly care. At the same time, it struggles to deal with complex challenges and integrate multiple contextual factors' influence in domains like healthcare. Behavioural design processes lack guidance on how to prevent this and instead define problems that are ecologically valid. Conventional design methods do guide designers to do this. Thus there is a need to investigate how design methods can support behavioural designers to explore the context and integrate multiple perspectives on the problem, resulting in context-sensitive problem definitions. To respond to this need, we present a case where designers used a combination of design methods to investigate the complex context of hygiene in nursing homes. We show how combining different design methods supported the designers in advancing their understanding of a complex context and the problematic behaviours that occurred in it. We conclude by discussing the importance of using design methods to reveal important insights at the early stages of the behavioural design process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does strategy matter for early-stage health start-ups seeking to build platform ecosystems? Drawing on a multi-year ethnographic study of two early-stage platform start-ups, we analyze their strategic decision-making process as they decide between refining their core service or attracting complementary services. Fundamentally, we seek to understand to which degree startup teams formulate such strategies, stick to them, or adapt to a changing opportunity landscape in such a highly regulated environment. Our work sheds light on the relevance of strategic intent, opportunistic behavior, and simple luck in the build-up of nascent digital health platform ecosystems. Preliminary results reveal that start-ups frequently adapt their strategy to the environmental dynamics, and not every start-up can capitalize on opportunities presented by easing regulations or use them strategically. Our work provides practical implications for policymakers aiming to foster opportunities for healthcare start-ups and for early-stage start-ups seeking to navigate the complex healthcare environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]