The contours of a human individual model based empathetic u-pillbox system for humanistic geriatric healthcare

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2013.09.026Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We propose an empathetic u-pillbox system.

  • We design a holistic elderly healthcare framework.

  • This research emphasizes on understanding of the elderly and provision of humanistic care.

  • This system provides personalized healthcare based on Cyber-I, digital clone of Real-I.

  • Data mining technology is the key to the wisdom discovery from data.

Abstract

A wide range of specific health issues affects the elderly, but one particularly significant issue in geriatric healthcare is non-adherence to medication regimens, particularly among elderly patients living alone. To address this problem, a range of electronic pillbox devices has been developed. Although these may offer a partial solution to this problem by ameliorating the issue of failing memory, it is important to have a full picture of medication adherence that includes other aspects besides forgetfulness.

This article proposes an empathetic u-pillbox system that aims to overcome the shortcomings of existing systems in ensuring adherence to a medication regime and makes an effort to design a holistic elderly healthcare framework by supporting additional functionalities like providing personalized services to the elderly based on an awareness of their individual situations by placing emphases on understanding of the elderly and provision of humanistic care. This system consists of three main processes: data acquisition of the elderly situation and medicine taking state; data analysis and elderly model enhancement; and provision of empathetic services to the elderly, in which cyber-I, human model, data cycle for the spiral quality of model enhancement, knowledge fusion towards wisdom for providing smart services are our critical concepts and techniques. This article will describe the system by going through three scenarios concerning the elderly using and interacting with the proposed u-pillbox system.

Although this system is designated for geriatric healthcare, it has a potential extension to general health monitoring and care at home. Moreover, there are many potential applications in clinic or hospital medication care systems. We believe the proposed framework to be a promising approach to one of the great social challenges facing societies in the 21st century.

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).

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