The world's population is ageing at a staggering rate. According to the United Nations, in Europe the proportion of older people (60 years or over) to the overall population is set to rise from 22 per cent in 2010 to 34 per cent in 2050. This trend is accentuated locally where the current ratio of 21 per cent is projected to climb to 37 per cent by 2050.
This social phenomenon will have implications on many aspects of life, including healthcare, family care, family composition and living arrangements. One of the immediate consequences will be a greater demand for long-term care. In a recent speech, the Parliamentary Secretary for the Elderly said that the number of long-term care beds needs to increase by at least 150 yearly to make up for the ageing population. The ultimate outcome of this will be a drop in the ratio of nurses, doctors and carers per patient.
To counter these challenges, new technological solutions are needed. PINATA (Pervasive Nursing and Doctoral Assistant) is a research project funded by the Malta Council for Science and Technology (MCST) to harness existing technologies to support care workers and the persons in need of continuous care. It is being carried out by Alexiei Dingli, Charlie Abela and Ranier Bonnici from the Department of Artificial Intelligence within the University of Malta in collaboration with St James Hospital.
PINATA will seek to develop an assistant to nursing and doctoral staff based on ambient intelligence (AmI) techniques. Coined by the European Union Information Society Technologies Advisory Group (ISTAG), AmI refers to a vision whereby devices embedded in the environment work in concert to sense the presence of people, anticipate their needs and respond to these needs in a personalised and context-aware manner.
PINATA will make use of three device systems. A real-time locating system (RTLS) will track the whereabouts of health workers, patients and equipment. Each room will be equipped with a camera system that watches over patients. Health workers will be provided with handhelds incorporating RFID readers that enable them to access critical information while on the move. In addition, PINATA will interact with visitors' cellular phones to extend its service provisioning to hospital visitors.
These devices are capable of sensing sufficient contextual information for a number of important scenarios. For instance, PINATA will address the health and safety requirement to know the number of people in the different sections of the hospital for evacuation purposes. Besides, the system will inform hospital staff the whereabouts of visitors. In another scenario, if a person with a contagious disease is diagnosed in the hospital, PINATA will pinpoint people who were in the vicinity of this person for infection examinations.
A recent article by the Falls Task Force Group (The Times, March 15) raised awareness on the high occurrence and harmful effects of falls among the elderly. PINATA will tackle this problem proactively and reactively. If a patient is deemed unable to walk and the camera system detects that the patient has climbed out of bed, PINATA will instantly report to nearby nurses and doctors. The system will also alert staff in the unfortunate event of an actual fall to ensure prompt assistance.
The functionality of PINATA culminates with the provision of personalised, context-inferred information on decision-makers' handhelds. When a doctor enters a ward, PINATA will detect the proximity to the patient being examined by means of the RTLS, consult with the appointments calendar to understand the nature of the visit, and hence pop out the most relevant patient records.
Nurses and doctors will additionally use their handheld's RFID module when administering medicine. Apart from assisting the hospital in the billing processes, this information will be examined by PINATA's reasoning engine to ensure that none of the pharmaceutical's ingredients conflict with the patient's recorded allergies.
Although tracking technologies have some negative connotations, one should not underestimate the potential of such systems when put to good use. PINATA will provide a software aide that puts the patient's well-being at the very centre of its operation by understanding significant hospital contexts and reporting to nurses and doctors as and when required.
The researchers are aware that people might be wary of technologies that track their actions. To this end, the team behind PINATA reassures that this research project will endeavour to aid the healthcare community in maintaining high levels of service towards their customers, rather than to coercively spy on people's actions. Furthermore, PINATA will make use of policies to manage tracking and information privacy according to the participants' preferences as specified in consent forms.