Wasic Catharina, Erzgräber Robert, Unger-Büttner Manja, Donath Carolin, Böhme Hans-Joachim, Graessel Elmar
Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), University Hospital Erlangen, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Center for Health Services Research in Medicine, Erlangen, Germany.
Department of Artificial Intelligence/Cognitive Robotics, Faculty of Informatics/Mathematics, University of Applied Science Dresden (HTW Dresden), Dresden, Germany.
Front Robot AI. 2024 Jun 21;11:1258847. doi: 10.3389/frobt.2024.1258847. eCollection 2024.
Many countries are facing a shortage of healthcare workers. Furthermore, healthcare workers are experiencing many stressors, resulting in psychological issues, impaired health, and increased intentions to leave the workplace. In recent years, different technologies have been implemented to lighten workload on healthcare workers, such as electronic patient files. Robotic solutions are still rather uncommon. To help with acceptance and actual use of robots their functionalities should correspond to the users' needs.
In the pilot study Care4All-Initial, we developed and field-tested applications for a mobile service robot in a psychosocial, multimodal group therapy for people with dementia. To guide the process and assess possible facilitators and barriers, we conducted a reoccurring focus group including people with dementia, therapists, professional caregivers as well as researchers from different disciplines with a user-centered design approach. The focus group suggested and reviewed applications and discussed ethical implications. We recorded the focus group discussions in writing and used content analysis.
The focus group discussed 15 different topics regarding ethical concerns that we used as a framework for the research project: Ethical facilitators were respect for the autonomy of the people with dementia and their proxies regarding participating and data sharing. Furthermore, the robot had to be useful for the therapists and attendees. Ethical barriers were the deception and possible harm of the people with dementia or therapists. The focus group suggested 32 different applications. We implemented 13 applications that centered on the robot interacting with the people with dementia and lightening the workload off the therapists. The implemented applications were facilitated through utilizing existing hard- and software and building on applications. Barriers to implementation were due to hardware, software, or applications not fitting the scope of the project.
To prevent barriers of robot employment in a group therapy for people with dementia, the robot's applications have to be developed sufficiently for a flawless and safe use, the use of the robot should not cause irritation or agitation, but rather be meaningful and useful to its users. To facilitate the development sufficient time, money, expertise and planning is essential.
许多国家都面临医护人员短缺的问题。此外，医护人员正经历诸多压力源，导致心理问题、健康受损以及离职意愿增加。近年来，已采用不同技术来减轻医护人员的工作量，如电子病历。机器人解决方案仍相当少见。为帮助人们接受并实际使用机器人，其功能应符合用户需求。
在“关爱所有人 - 初始”试点研究中，我们为一款移动服务机器人开发了应用程序，并在针对痴呆症患者的社会心理多模式团体治疗中进行了实地测试。为指导该过程并评估可能的促进因素和障碍，我们采用以用户为中心的设计方法，开展了一个包括痴呆症患者、治疗师、专业护理人员以及来自不同学科的研究人员的反复焦点小组。焦点小组提出并审查了应用程序，并讨论了伦理问题。我们以书面形式记录了焦点小组讨论内容并进行了内容分析。
焦点小组讨论了15个与伦理问题相关的不同主题，我们将其用作该研究项目的框架：伦理促进因素包括尊重痴呆症患者及其代理人在参与和数据共享方面的自主权。此外，机器人必须对治疗师和参与者有用。伦理障碍包括对痴呆症患者或治疗师的欺骗和可能的伤害。焦点小组提出了32种不同的应用程序。我们实施了13个应用程序，这些应用程序主要围绕机器人与痴呆症患者互动以及减轻治疗师的工作量展开。通过利用现有的硬件和软件以及在应用程序基础上进行构建，实施的应用程序得到了推动。实施过程中的障碍是由于硬件、软件或应用程序不符合项目范围。
为防止机器人在痴呆症患者团体治疗中的应用障碍，必须充分开发机器人的应用程序以实现完美且安全的使用，机器人的使用不应引起刺激或激动，而应对其用户有意义且有用。为促进开发，充足的时间、资金、专业知识和规划至关重要。
