While robots have been used in dementia care to provide interactive activities, most existing robot activities require some human facilitation.
This has been attributed to residents’ unfamiliarity with new things, challenges sustaining attention to activities and confusion about a given activity.
Since human-facilitated robot activity is often impractical in resource-constrained nursing facilities, the authors of a new study in the July issue of JAMDA developed and implemented a novel robot control logic they termed the “Adam Program.” It acts as the brains for a programmable human-like robot product called Alph Mini, both collectively referred to as “Adam.”
Lead author Dongjun Wu and colleagues recognized the importance of engagement in interactive activities for individuals with dementia. The literature supports a positive association between engagement with maintenance of function and social connections and, possibly, even a slowing of cognitive decline.
They set out to examine the feasibility of deploying Adam among nursing home residents with dementia. Their relatively small study involved 11 residents over age 65 with mild to moderate cognitive impairment from two nursing facilities in Brisbane, Australia.
Each of the 11 nursing home residents participated in non-human facilitated robot intervention three times per week for five weeks. The length of the intervention varied between participants (10-15min), as did the type of activities employed, which included chat, exercise and/or games. Each session was video recorded to quantify participants’ visual, behavioral and verbal engagement. Semi-structured interviews were then conducted at the end of the five-week intervention.
Based on the participant’s perceptions, findings demonstrated adequate acceptability for the robot level activities, with many developing friendships with Adam. There was a high level of visual engagement and an increased trend of behavior engagement over five weeks. Participants independently communicated with Adam, with most (97%) verbal engagements free of human facilitation.
The study concluded that using human-like robots to independently lead interactive activities for people with dementia is both feasible and acceptable.
While this is only the beginning of research in this arena, it is likely to accelerate, given the rapid advances in technology. Robots such as Adam may be one approach to maintaining quality of life for NH residents in the context of ever-increasing understaffing.
Barbara Resnick, PhD, CRNP is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Nursing, the associate dean of research and the Sonya Ziporkin Gershowitz chair in gerontology. She is currently the co-editor of the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, or JAMDA.
Co-editor Paul Katz, MD, CMD, is a professor and chair of the Department of Geriatrics at Florida State University’s College of Medicine. He is also past president of AMDA – The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine.
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