virtual experience<\/a> mixes the physical replicas of the station, carriages and seats with carefully placed screens showing footage of the real scenery.<\/p>\n\u201cWe take boredom away, we take loneliness away, isolation away, and bring in hope,\u201d says Elzette Lategan, the residential care services manager.<\/p>\n
Aged Care Research and Industry Innovation Australia says virtual reality can also be used to distract people from pain. It can guide them through relaxation exercises, games, calming scenery, and recreating events and memories, and supporting reminiscence therapy for people living with dementia.<\/p>\n
It can improve mood, cognition, memory, problem solving skills and spatial awareness, and may also help reduce pain, anxiety and social isolation, the Adelaide-based organisation says.<\/p>\n
Then there are the companion robots that are being used in dozens of places \u2013 like Abi, a brightly coloured machine. The company that makes her, Andromeda, say she uses AI and machine learning to recognise faces, understand emotions, and remember conversations.<\/p>\n
And she speaks 90 languages, so she can speak to the diverse range of people in homes in their preferred language.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe VR, the robots \u2026 it\u2019s great, particularly because older people in residential care are quite lonely,\u201d Moyle says. \u201cBut I think Australia needs to think outside the square.<\/p>\n
While some are enthusiastic about how tech can improve aged care, not everyone is as optimistic about the industry. Photograph: Matto LucasResearch from the University of Sydney found the narratives around agetech and AI for aged care \u2018distract from structural problems and reinforce ageism\u2019. Photograph: Matto Lucas<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s been a lot of emphasis on entertainment. There needs to be more of an emphasis on the types of technology that will assist people wanting to stay home.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of the time people have to go into an aged care facility because they can\u2019t shower or dress themselves, or because they\u2019re incontinent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Smart devices getting smarter<\/p>\n
For a while now, there have been smart wearables that can monitor a person\u2019s heart rate and temperature, and detect falls.<\/p>\n
Now, there are sensors that can sound the alarm if a stove has been left on unattended, and smart speakers that let family members send scheduled messages and reminders.<\/p>\n
And at home or in care, Moyle says there are electronic wheelchairs that can help pick someone up, and take them to a shower that turns on automatically. There are beds that roll the person over to make it easier to change them, and mattresses that sense if someone with dementia is about to get out of bed.<\/p>\n
People might dislike the idea of a machine that helps spoon-feed people, she says, but that might free up a staff member to talk to them about their lives.<\/p>\n
But not everyone is as optimistic about the industry.<\/p>\n
A group of University of Sydney researchers studied the agetech companies selling AI for aged care.<\/p>\n
The industry and governments are \u201csubscribing to this vision of technological rescue\u201d, some of them wrote in The Conversation<\/a>. But their research found the narratives \u201cdistract from structural problems and reinforce ageism\u201d.<\/p>\n\u201cAccording to the companies, older people are incidents waiting to happen and data sources to be mined,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n
AI relies on \u201cstereotypical ideas of older people as technophobic and passive\u201d, and the companies paint the sector as fundamentally broken, with their product the solution, which buries the fact that broader reforms are needed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe best role AI can play is through supporting care practices that include and empower older people and staff, centring their voices and experiences,\u201d the researchers wrote.<\/p>\n
Moyle agrees that the technology should never replace the human element of care.<\/p>\n
\u201cRobots don\u2019t have emotional responses,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re working on one with soft skin that will give you a hug. But most robots give not a lot of emotional response.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cYou\u2019ll never get rid of humans,\u201d Prof Wendy Moyle says, during a discussion about robots and other technology…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":705177,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":["post-705176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/705177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}