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National Science Foundation

FW-HTF-P: Robotic Health Assistants: A New Human-Machine Partnership in Home Healthcare

Welcome to the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Future of Work at the Human Technology Frontier: (FW-HTF) Project, a joint venture between Oklahoma State University and the University of Oklahoma Health Science Center.

 

The leaders in this project include:

 

Oklahoma State University:

  • Weihua Sheng Ph.D., Associate Professor, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
  • Alex Bishop, Ph.D, Associate Professor, Bryan Close Professor of Adulthood & Aging, Department of Human Development and Family Science

 

 

Fran and Earl Ziegler College of Nursing, The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center:

  • Barbara Carlson RN, Ph.D.,  Robert and Doris Klabzuba Professor of Nursing Science
  • Teri Round, RN, MS, Executive Director of Clinical Operations Case Management
  • Melissa Craft Ph.D., APRN-CNS, AOCN, Interim Senior Associate Dean

 

Project Summary

The home healthcare industry is currently under tremendous pressure to meet the demands of a growing aged population. Providing home care for the increasing number of chronically ill older adults will require major changes in ways providers gather information and deliver care services to them. This project will develop a robotic health assistant (RoHA)-based smart home healthcare system (SHHS) to greatly augment the productivity and efficiency of home healthcare providers. The RoHA will interact with older adults, incorporate health monitoring and provide proactive interventions. This research will deepen our understanding of the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on healthcare providers and help them adapt to this new work model. This project will nurture a new generation of healthcare providers who are prepared to embrace the inevitable technological transformation in the healthcare industry. The capability of AI-driven monitoring and intervention can potentially lower the cost of care because symptoms are managed continuously and treatments are implemented before they progress to the point of a medical emergency. The proposed technology will therefore help improve the quality of life of the underserved older adults in rural areas. This project will also have great impacts on improving the educational environment at Oklahoma State University and University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, especially in disciplines such as robotics, AI, geriatrics and gerontology. 

 

The long-term goal of this project is to empower home healthcare providers to achieve high productivity and quality of work life.  The objectives of this one-year planning project are two-folds: 1) building the research team and fostering collaboration with industry partners and stakeholders to develop the research concept of a RoHA-based SHHS; 2) conducting preliminary study and test of this concept.  For Objective 1, different strategies including focus groups and charrette workshops with industry partners and stakeholders will be used to identify the needs of healthcare providers and learn how case managers could deliver services via a robotic health assistant. For Objective 2, healthcare professionals will help pilot test and collect preliminary data/user feedback to improve the design of our RoHA prototype. This project will expand the research frontier in telemedicine by introducing the concept of a robotic health assistant, which will transform the work of home healthcare.  The robot will play a key role in delivering home healthcare services through AI-enabled health monitoring and intervention. First, by engaging industry partners and key stakeholders in the refinement, this project will identify natural language-based, older adult-friendly robot skills to evaluate the care recipient's physical and mental wellbeing, allowing data-driven, evidence-based home healthcare. Second, stakeholder input will provide further insights into how this robotic health assistant could enhance current healthcare services, including facilitating online virtual visits with healthcare providers, monitoring medication and therapy adherence, and proactively intervening on health problems. Third, this project will gain insights on the design of friendly human-robot interaction that fosters a productive human-machine partnership between healthcare providers and robots, therefore maximizing the capacity of existing resources and improving the quality of work life.

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