A wall representing Samsui women in the Chinese district in Singapore.
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Listening devices that detect falls “patient“Systems in hospitals and Robots helping exercise In healthcare homes, Singapore turns to artificial intelligence to help manage the health of its elderly population.
By 2030, a quarter of the Singaporeans will be 65 or more – In 2010, the figure was one in 10 – and it is estimated that around 6,000 nurses and care staff must be hired each year to meet Singapore health workforce targets.
Technology is essential to help fill the care lake in Singapore and elsewhere, according to Chuan de Foo, a researcher at Singapore Sawe Hock School of Public Health. World societies are “unpaid“For an aging population, Foo wrote in The Science Journal Frontiers last month, and with its co-authors describe AI and other technologies such as” pivotal forces likely to stimulate a paradigm change in health care “.
For FOO, artificial intelligence should play a “huge” role in the care for the elderly in Singapore, both in terms of aid to clinicians to manage non-acute conditions and to supervise administrative tasks such as monitoring the availability of hospital beds, he said in an email at CNBC. “While the elderly in Singapore becomes more informed, we see them turning to teleconsultations and digital tools that use AI technology,” he said.
AI is also used to detect disease earlier, an area of personal interest in Dr. Han EI Chew, researcher at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore. He said that the diabetic eye disease of his deceased mother could have been diagnosed – and treated – earlier if AI test methods had been available when she was alive, as they are now. “It would have been so useful when the family crossed this trip,” chew told CNBC by phone.
According to Chew. “We can deploy AI, but it is not a question of fully replacing man care … It is really a question of helping caregivers and helping the elderly to remain independent and to age,” he told CNBC via a video call.
Chew said that the Singapore housing and development committee even offers domestic technology integrated into detect when someone falls At the bottom, with an alert sent as close as possible to a resident or connected to a call center to get help.
These types of surveillance technology should be used with care, said Chew, in the jurisdiction that they are deployed. “The AI should empower the elders and not strip them of control. They must always have the choice to opt, set limits and, more importantly, to turn it off when they wish,” he told CNBC.
A “co -pilot” of care
It is not only Singapore who plans to use AI for care for the elderly. In the United States, Sensi.ai is a fast-growing “care co-pilot” that monitors the elderly using audio devices that are generally connected to three areas of their homes.
The co-founder and CEO of the Romi Gubes company said that technology can provide caregivers with more than 100 different information, alerting it to the first signs of urinary tract or respiratory infections, or falls or cognitive decline. “We combine several indicators from audio,” Gubes at CNBC told video call. “Think, for example, of a respiratory infection. It will be [take into account] The rate of cough, frequency, type of cough, as well as … complaints around fever, dizziness, “she said.
When Sensi.ai is installed in a house, it creates a “basic line” over two weeks, noting a range of “acoustic indicators”, said Gubes, including non -verbal sounds like inappropriate objects, steps or brambles, which he combines with the clinical knowledge of his team. Once AI knows the reference sounds in a house, it can alert caregivers to all audio anomalies that could suggest a health problem.
Gubes said Sensi is used by “tens of thousands” of elderly people in the United States and a spokesman said that the company was under discussion on potential expansion in Asia.
ARIM in AI
The experts to which CNBC spoke warned that AI should be used with care regarding senior health care.
FOO warned that the overexaling of the AI in consultations could lead to “less important health results” because all the elderly cannot use technology, and he warned that it should be properly designed to avoid “perpetuating digital ageism”. Indeed, the World Health Organization warned“The implicit and explicit biases of society, including approximately age, are often reproduced in AI technologies”, and its 2022 political memory The developers have urged to involve the elderly in the design of new technologies.
In Singapore, the government “Action plan for successful aging“Docuute its objectives, for example to reach 550,000 elderly people with a health and well-being program and reduce hospital deaths by 61% to 51% between 2023 and 2028.
But Foo said that the opinions of the elderly should be taken into account when determining how AI can meet their health needs. “Like all new initiatives, failure will be inevitable if the target audience, that is to say the elderly, is not on board. We [need] To hear their voices and adapt the National Health-Ai strategy to meet their needs without deleting the human element of health care. This is the challenge, “he told CNBC by e-mail.
For Chew, the approach of care for the elderly will have to mix man and machine, describing it as “high tech, but high touch”. “AI is probably better used as an additional set of eyes, ears and robots [are an] Set of additional hands, but not to replace high-touch human care, “he said.
