This article has more info than the one I posted a few days ago....
Accenture has recently completed a pilot program in the UK, which uses its artificial intelligence platform to help seniors manage their care and daily lives. The technology was developed by Accenture Liquid Studio in London and is tailored for older people living independently.
It can learn users’ behaviors and preferences and suggest activities to support their physical and mental health.
“With the help of Age UK London, we identified the more common challenges of everyday life for older people – from setting daily reminders to the heartache of loneliness – and applied AI to create a human-centered platform to provide support and assistance,” Laetitia Cailleteau, head of Accenture Liquid Studio London, said in a statement.
The platform runs on the Amazon Web Services cloud and includes a portal that lets family members and caregivers check on the individual’s daily activities. The platform can also help spot abnormalities in the user’s behavior, such as a missed medication, then alerts family and friends.
The pilot, which lasted three months, included 60 people aged 70 or older living independently. The company claims the pilot helped identify some of the most challenging tasks seniors deal with in the home and aided in the development of the Accenture platform. The platform used the self-service Amazon Alexa Skills Kit to customize the AI to power the devices.
The senior population is growing in the UK. Many of those seniors are living with loneliness. Age UK, a nonprofit dedicated to elderly services, reports that 200,000 older people in the UK are going a month or more without having a conversation with friends or family. The nonprofit also predicts that 3.9 million older people use TV as their main form of company.
“Older people are not a homogenous group; the aging experience is very personal, with each person having different needs, and we now have technology that can deliver an increasingly personalized experience to them,” Paul Goulden, Age UK London’s chief executive, said in a statement. “The elderly care pilot has helped show how technology can improve the well-being of older people. The potential here is huge. I look forward to seeing how Accenture and Amazon Web Services technologies can positively impact future developments for the benefit of older people.”