SBIR-STTR Award

This project’s long-term purpose is to adapt an existing telepresence robot, Vecna’s VGo, for remote care of persons living at home with early-stage Alzheimer’s and related dementias (ADRD). It responds to the NIA’s call for development of robots to support care management and independent living, promote social engagement, reduce loneliness, and assist family members and professionals in caring for patients. This work addresses the NIA’s strategic goal of developing interventions to maintain health, well-being, and function in the elderly. The proposed socially assistive robot, the VGo Assist, will enable family members and professionals to provide mobile, flexible, user-friendly telehealthcare to ADRD patients. The proposed incorporation of an open- platform software architecture, unique among at-home telehealth robots, will encourage third-party developers to create diverse AD-specific applications that extend the VGo Assist’s capabilities in diverse, unforeseeable ways. Its open architecture will make it, in effect, the “smartphone of telehealth.” Under this Phase I SBIR proposal from Vecna and the New England Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center, detailed functional specifications will be defined based on multi-disciplinary input. The specifications will be implemented in a working prototype in Phase II. Capabilities will minimally include two- way vision and sound, navigation under control of a remote caregiver, and support of medication management through automated and caregiver-provided reminders and compliance verification. The desirability and feasibility of additional features (e.g., a medication dispensing mechanism) will be evaluated. Intelligent robotics will assure safe navigation and self-charging and may provide services such as raising alerts for patient wandering or other emergencies. The VGo Assist will be distinguished from competitors by lower cost, more extensive built-in features, and the open-ended functionality enabled by its open-platform software architecture. Phase I Specific Aims are: (1) Conduct multi-disciplinary focus groups to identify possible features to integrate into the VGo Assist and probe user acceptability and utility of integration with home health data devices. (2) Create a functional-requirements document specifying VGo Assist workflows, user interface needs, and target audiences. (3) Translate the functional-requirements document into “business rules” of a front-end interface and user experience; develop screens and mock-ups. (4) Create an open-architecture specification and application-programming interface for Phase II product development. (5) Deliver project report to funder, including Phase I product description and market analysis.

Public Health Relevance Statement:
PROJECT NARRATIVE Vecna seeks to adapt an existing telepresence robot, Vecna’s VGo, to support remote care of persons living at home with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD). The proposed remotely- controlled device, the “VGo Assist,” will enable family members and healthcare professionals not present in the home to provide flexible, user-friendly, care to ADRD patients. The proposed open-platform software architecture, unique among at-home telehealth robots, will encourage third-party developers to create diverse eldercare applications, making the VGo Assist the “smartphone of telehealth.”

Project Terms:
Address; Alzheimer's Disease; application programming interface; Architecture; base; Business Rules; Calendar; Caregiver support; Caregivers; Caring; Cellular Phone; Charge; Clinical; Communication; Complex; Computer software; cost; Cues; Data; Dementia; dementia care; design; Development; Devices; education research; Elderly; Emergency Situation; Engineering; Exercise; experience; Face; falls; Family Caregiver; Family member; Feedback; fitbit; flexibility; Focus Groups; Future; Generic Drugs; Goals; Health; health data; Health Professional; Home environment; improved; Independent Living; informal caregiver; innovation; Intervention; Intuition; Loneliness; Marketing; Mediating; Medical; Medication Management; Methods; multidisciplinary; New England; novel; Patient Care; patient home care; Patients; Personal Satisfaction; Persons; Pharmaceutical Preparations; Phase; product development; Production; Programming Languages; programs; prototype; Proxy; quality assurance; Quality of life; remote control; remote health care; Reporting; Research; Research Personnel; Robot; Robotics; Running; Safety; Services; Site; Small Business Innovation Research Grant; social; social engagement; Social isolation; sound; Specific qualifier value; Speed; System; telehealth; Time; Translating; Update; user-friendly; Vision; Work

Assistive Technologies (AT) is a broad area of activities to support physical health, well-being, social connectedness, and ability to live independently at home. Assistive Robotics (AR) has largely referred to robots that assisted people through physical interaction, while Socially Interactive Robotics (SIR) describe machines that interact primarily through social interaction. Socially Assistive Robotics (SAR) has been described as the intersection of Assistive Robotics (AR) and Socially Interactive Robotics (SIR). The goal of this Phase II project is to develop the VGo Assist robot by augmenting a social robot (VGo) with assistive technologies (AT) as part of an expandable smart home/assistive environment (AE) solution for people with Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementia (ADRD). From the Phase I work, a survey study was conducted which recruited three groups of people: individuals with ADRD, family caregivers, and clinical staff who worked with ADRD patients. All of the groups agreed that VGo Assist would potentially allow an individual with ADRD to remain living along at home longer or to be left home alone for long stretches of time, and the group that showed the highest level of enthusiasm was family caregivers. Enthusiasm among this group was particularly high because they also bear a significant burden from Alzheimer’s disease. A recently published report by the Alzheimer’s Association revealed that when compared with caregivers of people without dementia, twice as many caregivers of those with dementia indicate substantial financial, emotional and physical difficulties, and 59% of family caregivers of people with ADRD rated the emotional stress of caregiving as high or very high. For Phase II, core use cases were derived from the results of the Phase I survey study, which we found to also be very consistent with findings from literature review of other similar survey studies. The specific aims for Phase II are to develop capabilities for VGo Assist which will address the use cases that were identified. Public Health Relevance Statement Project Narrative The goal of the Phase II project is to develop the VGo Assist robot for supporting individuals with Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementia (ADRD) as well as their family caregivers. VGo Assist will be developed by augmenting a social robot (VGo) with assistive technologies (AT) as part of an expandable smart home/assistive environment (AE) solution. Core use cases were derived from the results of the Phase I survey study, which were conducted with three groups of people: individuals with ADRD, family caregivers, and clinical staff who worked with ADRD patients.