How do you wash your hands? Turn on the tap, wet, lather with soap, rinse, turn off the tap and then dry your hands. Easy, right? Not for someone suffering from dementia, a common symptom of Alzheimer’s disease. For people with mental disorders, remembering even a simple sequence of actions can be nearly impossible.
But Professor of Occupational Therapy Dr. Alex Mihailidis, who leads U of T’s Intelligent Assistive Technology and Systems Lab (IATSL), is working on a high-tech way to help sufferers of dementia and other disorders with the activities of daily living.
Mihailidis wants to create an “intelligent home” that can interact with its occupants. He describes such a home as “a space where, no matter what you’re doing, the house understands what you’re doing and your intent, and then provides assistance as necessary.” This could involve anything from detecting if one of the occupants falls down, to helping them wash their hands. Researchers at the IATSL are currently trying to develop systems to solve both of these problems.
A caregiver is often required to lead an Alzheimer’s patient through each step of a task like hand-washing. But by using a system of cameras combined with artificial intelligence algorithms, the home’s computer can determine what the patient is doing and guide them through the process using recorded audio prompts.
Mihailidis explains that one of the greatest benefits of this system is reducing the workload on a caregiver. “We have one particular participant [who] requires the caregiver to be with him for about seven minutes every time he washes his hands. When the technology was in place the caregiver was required for only 30 seconds. The technology took care of all the prompting that was required.”
With an aging population and fears that long-term care facilities will be overwhelmed in the near future, it has become increasingly important to provide a means for the elderly to safely remain at home.
Mihailidis and his team also hope that equipping a home with a camera system that could determine when the occupant has fallen down would be extremely helpful for elderly patients. Current medical alarm systems, which require that the user press a button worn on a necklace to call for help, will fail if the user becomes unconscious or forgets to wear the alarm (common among both older adults and Alzheimer’s patients).
The advantage of using cameras is that the computer will detect a fall without the need to interact with the occupant. This system, still under development, has been tested using young adults in various fall poses, and currently works near an 80 per cent successful detection rate.
While the use of technology in healthcare is booming, patients with dementia have not necessarily reaped the full benefits from research advancements. “Technology and healthcare is one thing, but technology for this type of population is still really gaining acceptance,” says Mihailidis. He explains that one of the largest barriers to implementing these systems is showing that there is a positive effect for a person with dementia.
“I think that was the big problem, a lot of people were asking, ‘Sure, you can make the technology but are they actually going to benefit from it?’ Our project shows that that yes, they are benefiting from it.”
A fully “intelligent home” is still several years away, but the individual components, such as the hand-washing assistant, have already gone through prototyping and clinical testing. In addition, Prof. Mihailidis also sees an extension of this technology into other areas of healthcare such as pediatrics, or helping nurses with scheduling.
