Medication adherence management for in-home geriatric care with a companion robot and a wearable device

Abstract

Older adults are prone to forgetfulness and varying degrees of cognitive impairment, which can lead to not taking medication on time, taking the wrong medication or the wrong dose, all of which can negatively affect a person’s health and recovery from illness. Existing medication reminders, like mobile apps and pill boxes, are neither age-friendly nor designed to minimize the burden of documenting medication adherence. In this paper, we present a Medication Adherence Management System (MAMS) for elders, which is based on a companion robot and a wearable device. The MAMS addresses the key issues of safe medication management: medication reminders, medication confirmation, and medication history recording. Human subject tests were conducted to evaluate the performance, acceptability and usability of the MAMS. Results from 35 human subjects showed that the average scores of the convenience, usefulness, and adoptability of the proposed MAMS were 8.17, 8.49, and 8.23 out of 10, respectively. The System Usability Scale (SUS) scores for the MAMS, the robot, and the wearable device are 75.29, 78.60 and 76.40, respectively. We believe the MAMS has potential use in future in-home geriatric care.