Digital Health for People with dementia
Date 18.02.2019
PR190312 – Parliament hosts National Conference on Dementia
Attard, C. (2019) Digital Health Technology to improve quality of life of carers and people with dementia. Maltese Parliament, first national conference on dementia.
Significant progress has been achieved in IT, making Malta a leading EU Member State in technologies in different sectors. However, today our focus is on digital health. Malta has the potential to be the best in adopting digital technology with the aim of improving the quality of life of citizens This requires a different approach from our usual practices in other sectors. We are not talking only about technology or only about health. It is digital health. We, therefore, need to learn about both disciplines simultaneously.
Our initial studies have shown that about 96% of the carers and healthcare professionals believe that technology can facilitate their work but currently, less than 5% have access to technology at their place of work or have practically any knowledge of this technology.
Technology particularly IOT, data science, pervasive computing, Virtual Reality, AI and robotics are all different areas of technology that together can empower the healthcare community and technologists to address problems that can help improve the quality of life through technology. I am both a researcher and a lecturer. I think both roles are important and intertwined. Technology should not be considered as a black box, where professionals from other disciplines accept to do things automatically without becoming themselves practitioners of technology.
In the next five minutes, I want to share 7 points about how technology can empower us particularly to improve the quality of life to everyone, in this particular case addressing the needs of people with dementia.
1) Technology is a language we need to master well. All stakeholders need to learn how to communicate using technology, by mastering it in our everyday life. Most of us are exposed to technology but how many of us really make the best of it? Do we have the opportunity to learn more about it and trust it? Can you think of a situation where technology can sometimes be a lifesaver? Think about it.
2) We are too focused on our Academic Discipline and practices. We are very good at what we do. But if you know you can achieve more by introducing technology in what we do, wouldn’t you want to go for it?
3) Let me give you an example. We can monitor in real time ourselves, our loved ones or patients and by doing so we can learn so much about our body and mental state and answer questions such as, why are we stressed? What is making us anxious? With this information, we can take the necessary action with advice from professionals.
4) Personal healthcare is the way forward. We speak about Industry 4.0, i.e. connected devices and artificial intelligence to automate the process further but the future is personalization, the fifth industrial revolution, or industry 5.0. We can achieve more by putting humans back into the industry with collaborative solutions. This means workers will be upskilled to provide value-added tasks.
5) The increasing need for remote care. Robotics can relieve families from the need to be continually physically present with their loved ones while feeling confident that they can reach out to them effectively. Robots can bring parents closer to their children.
Digitalisation and Health. Through the research project, I am leading with a multi-disciplinary team, we are learning all about how different professionals are solving problems. We are faced with a lot of challenges. These are being discussed in various focus groups were a number of professionals from different disciplines are sharing their experience and most importantly, they want to learn about each other-that is finding solutions, through practical experience. We are sharing knowledge by living it in the first person. We are not only talking about solutions, but we are actively involved and we are excited about the potential of what we are discovering.
6) Ethics, respecting the dignity of all those who need to make use of use technology, particularly those who are not in control of themselves and depend on others. We need to protect people with dementia.
7) Education, we are learning through research, organizing several focus groups, controlled experiments and developing prototypes. By using an ageing simulation suit and wearable devices we are allowing participants to experience both technology and what it feels to be old and with dementia, by giving up some of our time to create the required datasets to improve algorithms and also learn more about technology All these points are made possible through our vision of combining industry that invests and gives us access to the technology – knowledge we need, such as ISL limited. We are led by the passion for knowledge, through academia that is both research and education and that aims to push our work to the limits, through University. We are working on solutions, through various scientific studies that can be reproduced by adopting proper practice that can be proved useful. We are motivating our community to participate and healthcare professionals to dedicate time to research, and who live every day with PwD such as at SVDP residence. They are always reminding us where to look and on what we should focus on. They help us by ‘putting on’ a lens for us to see where we should look closer to what we need to focus on, ensuring that we do not leave out that important stage or challenge that makes the project a success. Because digital health and our research through technology are about detail. Quality is measured by how much you can trust technology, make sense, feel how useful it is and most importantly is accessible to everyone.
I have chosen to work in this area of research within our department i.e. Computer Information Systems within the Faculty of ICT because we focus on User-centric design. We design systems by keeping in mind the user throughout the whole lifecycle of the research project. Our user is the person with dementia and we are reaching out to them by empowering carers, professionals who every day would like to use digital tools that support them.
Our team agreed to ensure we can create studies that also allow participants to learn by experience both technology and the human element – what persons with dementia feel. This is achieved by creating spaces in our labs that simulate PwD wandering patterns using an ageing simulation suit. We are also supporting the initiatives by passing on our experience and setups to the dementia courses that are being organized. I hope to meet most of you after this conference and involve you in our work. We are interested in getting to know you more and looking forward to furthering collaboration.
link: https://parlament.mt/13th-leg/press-releases/2019/02-feb/pr190312-national-conference-dementia/
