The contours of a human individual model based empathetic u-pillbox system for humanistic geriatric healthcare
Section snippets
Motivation
Healthcare is an increasingly important aspect of 21st century life, widely considered a basic human right in economically advanced countries and as an essential concomitant of economic development in less economically developed countries. As a consequence, issues centered around the funding and provision of healthcare are deeply emotive political issues in all advanced polities.
There is considerable variance in healthcare systems, but in all advanced economies the proportion of the economy
Existing pillbox systems
There have been earlier studies into employing technology based on pillbox systems aimed at the problem of non-adherence to medication regimes among the elderly. An estimated one third to one half of all patients in the US do not take their medications as prescribed by their doctors [10], a phenomenon potentially dangerous to health. In 1998, Doughty et al. designed a pillbox device (TEMPEST) which comprised of up to 6 containers programmed with prescription information by the pharmacist for
U-pillbox system
This research is aimed at not only providing basic and common functions of the existing systems in ensuring adherence to a medication regime, but also supporting additional functionalities to enable interactions with the elderly and to be aware of the medication, health, and related mental situation of the elderly, so as to provide humanistic and empathetic care to them.
Significant features of the u-pillbox system
Compared with existing pillbox systems, the proposed u-pillbox system has its own five significant features, enabling the provision of empathetic and active healthcare services. They are humanistic approach, personalized healthcare, human individual model based, emotion model embedded and Internet-empowered transparent & smart healthcare service.
Three scenarios envisaging the role of the u-pillbox in healthcare for the elderly
Poor medication adherence often risks preventable serious deterioration in the health of patients, particularly for elderly patients with chronic illnesses. Although tracking individual patients’ medication regime adherence is the basic function of the proposed u-pillbox device, it is not limited to this function alone. In this section, three scenarios are given to envisage the role of u-pillbox system in healthcare for the elderly from three varied aspects, and the software simulation of the
Conclusion
This article proposes an empathetic u-pillbox system to address significant issues in geriatric healthcare with the potential to enhance existing care arrangements for the elderly, and aid the development of more innovative care in the future. The system would be a significant advance on existing pillbox systems with features that extend beyond medication dispensation to utilize ubiquitous technologies to amass data on individual patients, and then process this data to provide the most
Challenges and future work
In our research to this point we have laid out the design principles on which a flexible approach to pressing issues in geriatric healthcare based on a pillbox system would be grounded. We have set out a design architecture for such a system, developed a prototype system and drawn up realistic simulations and scenarios to test the concept we have come up with. However, much work remains. Many challenges have to be met before the wide application of a u-pillbox system in geriatric healthcare.
Acknowledgments
The work is partially supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (No. 25330270). We would like to express our particular gratitude to Ms. Shiqin Yang and Mr. Jingwei Wang for their contributions to this article and to Mr. Alan Morgan for his attention and time in discussions, making valuable comments, and providing English revisions. We would like to thank the reviewers for their valuable comments.
Runhe Huang is a professor in the Faculty of Computer and Information Sciences at Hosei University, Japan. She received a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Mathematics from University of the West of England in 1993. Her research fields include multi-agents systems, computational intelligence, and ubiquitous intelligence computing. She is member of IEEE and ACM. Contact her at [email protected].
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Runhe Huang is a professor in the Faculty of Computer and Information Sciences at Hosei University, Japan. She received a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Mathematics from University of the West of England in 1993. Her research fields include multi-agents systems, computational intelligence, and ubiquitous intelligence computing. She is member of IEEE and ACM. Contact her at [email protected].
Xin Zhao received her B.Sc. degree in 2010 from School of Software Technology, Dalian University of Technology, M.Sc. degree in 2013 from Faculty of Computer and Information Sciences, Hosei University, Japan. She is currently a graduate school student in School of Software Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, China.
Jianhua Ma is a professor of the Department of Digital Media in Faculty of Computer and Information Sciences at Hosei University, Japan. Previously, he had 15 years’ working experience at NUDT, Xidian University and University of Aizu (Japan). His research interests include multimedia, networks, ubiquitous computing, social computing, and cyber intelligence. He has published over 200 papers, and edited over 20 books/proceedings and over 20 journal special issues. He is a co-founder of IEEE Int’l Conf. on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing (UIC), IEEE Conf. on Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom), and IEEE Conf. on Internet of Things (iThings).