Technology
Kong company Awakening Health. Grace can be programmed to listen to residents’ life stories and help them to digitally contact their loved ones. Also, the robot can perform certain health functions such as monitoring the resident’s temperature, pulse and blood pressure. Meanwhile, residential facilities in the US are also increasingly using social care robots to interact with residents in order to free up staff for other important tasks. Some of these machines incorporate
screens on to which residents’ families can upload their photographs. They can also respond to facial cues and detect when a resident is displaying anxiety or confusion, then change the mood by displaying a prized family photo or throwing in a joke. And the machines can be linked to wearable sensors that provide insights into residents’ health conditions.
Scaling up However, despite their obvious potential, care home robots have not yet taken off on a grand scale. There are a number of theories as to why this might be the case, not least of which is the relatively high cost of the units. There is also some evidence to suggest that robots can actually create extra work for caregivers. However, development continues, and in June 2023 it was announced that China was planning to deploy hundreds of robots to attend to the needs of its aging population while also plugging a 1.7 million gap in social care staffing. There are currently more than 100 Chinese start-ups specialising in robots that can offer rehabilitation, companionship, and nursing functions.
Technological solutions in general have become adopted much more widely over the past few years While few of these companies have
achieved mass production to date, analysts have high hopes for the industry’s long- term prospects. In fact, a research firm in Guangdong province recently released a report predicting that the market will ‘explode’ over the next decade and become more than three times larger by 2027 than it was in 2021.
One area in which robots – and
technology in general – is already proving useful in care homes is in the cleaning sector. Automated systems can take on the
most physically strenuous of cleaning tasks, freeing up staff to tackle the more detailed work.
The efficacy of such machines was tested in 2021 when a government-funded trial was carried out in 25 UK care homes. This included the deployment of robotic vacuum cleaners, which took over all floor-cleaning functions, while ATP testing equipment and antiviral surface cleaners were used to ensure a more thorough clean. As a result of the new measures, pathogen levels dropped by an average of 41 per cent in just three days after the trial was implemented. The robots also proved to be popular with care home staff – in a post-trial survey, around 35 per cent of employees strongly agreed that these automated aids had saved them time, while 88 per cent felt the robots had a useful role to play alongside manual cleaning. An impressive 100 per cent said the machines were easy to use.
The stuff of science fiction? Of course, while robots can be used to good effect in care homes, it is also vitally important that human operatives are ever- present. Human carers have a crucial role in reassuring residents and responding to their needs, while cleaners will react more swiftly to spills and accidents and will be able to perform detailed cleaning of frequent touchpoints more effectively than even the most dexterous of robots. However, using machines to carry out certain care home cleaning applications makes good sense. Residential homes had to remain fully operational throughout each lockdown, and it is always crucial that all areas of the home are cleaned to high standards. In order to ensure this, cleaners
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www.thecarehomeenvironment.com April 2024
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