Inclusively Developed Voice Assistant Technology for Elderly Care

People with Dementia (PwD) often need reminders to complete everyday activities like showering, eating, and taking medication. These reminders could be a post-it note on the fridge, a call from a carer, or an alert on their mobile. However, a simple reminder to complete a task can be insufficient.

There are presently 47m people worldwide living with dementia and by 2030 this number will be 75m. Every 3 seconds, a patient develops dementia, and there are 10 million new cases every year around the globe(WHO).

GG Care is a unique technology that uses Amazon Alexa to support a person's everyday activities through interactive voice reminders, called Digital Interventions (DIs). Our DIs include medication reminders, notifications that visitors are coming, reminders to stay healthy, and prompts to make social connections.

This project aims to create a framework for PwD to care for themselves or improve their quality of life. GG Care harnesses Amazon Alexa's voice assistant technology to help PwD complete tasks and retain independence. This project enables our technology to be more inclusive by assisting the wider elderly population regardless of cognitive ability and offering our services via the telephone.

Carers can use our web interface and Alexa Skill to provide interactive reminders for PwD. The DIs simplify the complexity of tasks by breaking each task into easily digestible steps with a series of questions and prompts. The individual user interacts only with their voice; there are no clunky menus or buttons.

When reminding the individual to take medication, GG Care first asks if they know where to find their medication. If they need assistance, GG Care will: * Provide a hint for the location. * Give them time to retrieve it. * Confirm they found it and take their medication.

We will extend the voice capabilities of our current technology to increase accessibility through an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) telephone system. Being accessible by telephone closes the technological gap for those without an Internet connection or less tech-savvy. Without those burdens, we can scale our services to more care residents.

Our functionality will increase by using the testbed to create a new feature allowing carers to record their own voice for use in the IVR system. By using a familiar voice, the care resident will be more receptive to the instruction and better able to stay socially connected.