Top tech: Robot care

The Covid pandemic has swiched attention firmly onto the crippling shortage of carers for an ageing society – so how effectively can some of the work be taken on by robots?

The pandemic has highlighted the vulnerability of care homes and the difficulties of finding care workers to look after elderly people. And that issue’s only set to worsen in most western economies, with falling birth rates and increasing longevity set to accelerate a demographic shift that will further push up the dependency ratio. 

The solution, in Japan at least, is for robots to provide care services. According to a paper published in January by the US National Bureau of Economic Research, by 2016 some 17.6% of care homes were already deploying robots, which are subsidised by the government.

But official projections suggest there will be a shortage of 380,000 care workers in the country by 2025, and robots are widely expected to fill that gap. 

In the UK, there were some 120,000 unfilled vacancies in the care sector before the pandemic arrived, and interest is also growing in using robots to take some of the load there. 

A trial conducted in both the UK and Japan last year found that older adults in care homes who interacted with the robots for up to 18 hours across two weeks had a significant improvement in their mental health.

The largest ever global study on the use of culturally competent robots in caring for the elderly, it was carried out by the University of Bedfordshire, Middlesex University and Advinia Healthcare, in partnership with the University of Genoa. 

The trial also demonstrated a “small but positive impact” in the reduction of loneliness among residents, and claimed a “significant positive impact” on participants’ attitudes towards robots.

Advinia Healthcare, one of the largest providers of dementia care in the UK, said it was “working towards implementing this into routine care of vulnerable people to reduce anxiety and loneliness and provide continuity of care”.

The robot used in this study is called Pepper, and moves around on wheels. It’s made by Japanese company Softbank Robotics and its ‘conversational personality trait’ has been created by a company called Caresses. 

Pepper uses AI to learn about the interests and backgrounds of individual care home residents. Based on this knowledge, it can then hold simple conversations with them. The results of the trial were not wholly positive: it also found that the robots lacked compassion and altruism – regarded as two key values in the care of elderly people. 

Irena Papadopoulos, Professor of Transcultural Health and Nursing at Middlesex University, was responsible for developing the cultural concepts and guidelines for the robot, to make it able to respond to the culture-specific needs and preferences of older people. 

She said: “Socially assistive, intelligent robots for older people could relieve some pressures in hospitals and care homes.” But she added: “No-one is talking about replacing humans – the evaluation demonstrates that we are a long way from doing that – but it also reveals that robots could support existing care systems.” 

The US study found that robot use in care homes did have an impact on the human employees. “We find that robot adoption increases the number of care workers and nurses. These effects are concentrated on non-regular employees and have no effect on regular employees,” it said. 

It found robot adoption reduces the monthly wages of regular nurses, but speculated: “This may be due to the reduction of care burden at night, including night shift hours, afforded by monitoring robots, the kind of robot most frequently adopted by nursing homes.” It also reported that robot adoption reduces the likelihood of nursing homes reporting difficulty in staff retention. 

Meanwhile, a US robotics company is already working with the NHS to provide robotic pets for dementia patients. The battery-powered robotic cats and golden retriever puppies – around £104 and £124 each – make realistic purring and yapping sounds and contain sensors that enable them to respond to motion and touch.