Could Amazon Echo help cut the cost of dementia?

Intelligent digital assistants such as Amazon Echo or Google Home should involve dementia patients in their development, recommends a new IMechE report.

An estimated 800,000 people in the UK suffer from dementia, and that figure is expected to double by 2040, leading to a three-fold increase in healthcare costs.

A new report by the IMechE, Engineering and Dementia, argues that the use of Intelligent Assistive Technologies could provide a practical and cost-effective method of providing care and supporting dementia sufferers, and help them stay in their homes for longer.

It recommends the creation of a specific Dementia Technology Advisory Board before the end of 2019 to oversee the specification, development and introduction of effective and ethically sound technology. The advisory board would form part of the new UK Dementia Research Institute. 

The advisory board would focus on investment in healthcare structures to ensure compatibility with Intelligent Assistive Technologies, ensuring that designers and engineers include appropriate stakeholders in the development of such technologies, and investigate and clarify ethical issues at an early stage of product development.

“The introduction of these technologies to support dementia patients and their carers poses some significantly different and potentially unique challenges compared with other healthcare technologies,” said Graham Isaac, Institution member and visiting professor at the University of Leeds, who led the development of this report.

“The technologies need to be compatible with a wide range of symptoms and must be adaptable as the condition will inevitably progress over time,” said Dr Helen Meese, trustee of the Institution and MedTech consultant.

The report builds on the Healthy Homes study, released by the Institution earlier this year, into how the use of technology and innovation in smart homes will be the key to enabling people to be more active and stay in their homes for longer.