Delivering Digital Healthcare for Elderly: A Holistic Framework for the Adoption of Ambient Assisted Living

Shifting the Paradigm of Nursing Home Care for People with Dementia: The Italian Experience of Il Paese Ritrovato and the Impact of SARS-CoV-2

BACKGROUND

Il Paese Ritrovato is an Italian nursing home founded in 2018, it is based on the Alzheimer village model and admits people with mild-to-moderate dementia.

OBJECTIVE

Describe the impact of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic on people living at Il Paese Ritrovato through a Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA) regularly administered prior to and during the pandemic.

METHODS

We explored the effects of a person-centered approach. We assessed 64 subjects (enrolled and followed between June 2018 and December 2020), who underwent at least 18 months of observation prior to the pandemic. Each subject was evaluated using a CGA on admission time (T0) and at defined time-points: T6, T12, T18. One last CGA evaluation was performed during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic (TCovid-19). Temporal trends during T0-T18, and differences between T18 and TCovid-19 were calculated.

RESULTS

The mean age was 82 years with a prevalence for females (77.0%) and Alzheimer's disease diagnosis (60%). Psychiatric and behavioral disorders were the most common conditions (80%). We utilized a nonpharmacological approach aimed at promoting the residents' overall wellbeing and observed satisfactory performance during the first 18 months. In comparison with the pre-pandemic period, TCovid-19 enlightened +11.7% use of antidepressants and a decline of Mini-Mental State Examination mean values (not statistically significant), while engagement in activities dropped.

CONCLUSIONS

The pandemic may have disrupted the existing model of care, but at the same time, it confirmed that the Il Paese Ritrovato approach, which encompasses symptoms improvement and multicomponent support, is in fact beneficial.

Research status of elderly-care robots and safe human-robot interaction methods

Faced with the increasingly severe global aging population with fewer children, the research, development, and application of elderly-care robots are expected to provide some technical means to solve the problems of elderly care, disability and semi-disability nursing, and rehabilitation. Elderly-care robots involve biomechanics, computer science, automatic control, ethics, and other fields of knowledge, which is one of the most challenging and most concerned research fields of robotics. Unlike other robots, elderly-care robots work for the frail elderly. There is information exchange and energy exchange between people and robots, and the safe human-robot interaction methods are the research core and key technology. The states of the art of elderly-care robots and their various nursing modes and safe interaction methods are introduced and discussed in this paper. To conclude, considering the disparity between current elderly care robots and their anticipated objectives, we offer a comprehensive overview of the critical technologies and research trends that impact and enhance the feasibility and acceptance of elderly care robots. These areas encompass the collaborative assistance of diverse assistive robots, the establishment of a novel smart home care model for elderly individuals using sensor networks, the optimization of robot design for improved flexibility, and the enhancement of robot acceptability.