TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION

To combat social isolation, the Lions Befrienders Service Association (LBSA) created an easy-to-use elderly-friendly tablet device that lets users monitor and report their daily wellbeing. Pushing an “I am OK”button lets people know they are alright, and any missed check-ins alert family or LBSA volunteers to confirm the person’s safety. The tablet offers entertainment, learning, and health-related functions as well.

CARE-Net is a digital platform that assists underserved rural communities by connecting health, welfare, long-term care, and medical care. By allowing inter-agency data-sharing and communication, experts can quickly identify a person’s needs and consult with others to resolve them. Village care managers (trained citizen health leaders) in each village help their neighbors navigate the system and advocate on their behalf.

Nurse & Craft addresses aging, rural communities by establishing a home-visit nursing station to provide medical treatment and care at home, taking advantage of telemedicine to access medical doctors on the mainland. They also offer a combination of health monitoring technologies, regular home visits by nurses, and health classes to improve medical literacy and digital literacy among older residents and promote healthier living.

YoungHappy is a social enterprise providing in-person and digital solutions to promote social interaction, physical activity, and mental stimulation for urban elders. They create “Happy Spaces,” community hubs located in shopping malls, let members join their peers for art workshops, health talks, exercise classes, etc., while their “YoungHappy Plus” platform (via app or LINE), offers virtual classes on digital literacy, health, and more.

MyAgeing has created five comprehensive, evidence-based educational modules to improve digital literacy skills among older people, helping them access essential services and stay connected to their communities. Topics include using mobile devices for navigation, messaging, and shopping, and they focus particularly on accessing safe content and avoiding scams.

The Ready Senior Project is an online platform that includes a learning space for gaining technology skills as well as health-related and caregiving skills. This university-based project seeks to empower older people to be economically self-reliant, have a good quality of life, and reduce the burden on healthcare systems as Thailand’s population continues to age.

Each year, thousands of people living with dementia wander off, becoming disoriented and unable to find their way home. Japanese authorities received more than 17,000 such missing person reports in 2020. To solve this problem, ORANGE LINKS created a small, waterproof sticker that is affixed to a fingernail and includes a personalized QR code.

Manoottangwai, a Thai online media platform, targets older people to create a positive mindset and help them achieve an active lifestyle, and it targets younger people to help them understand that post-retirement wellbeing.

Dementia Eyes uses an augmented reality (AR) filter to reproduce the visual difficulties experienced by people with dementia, such as poor depth perception. Unlike VR, which creates a virtual space, AR lets users experience the effects in their real surroundings.

Using virtual reality (VR) technology and a trained facilitator, this program allows caregivers, nurses, family members, and the general public to experience the symptoms of dementia from a first-hand perspective, experiencing the emotions brought about due to the symptoms and the interactions with the people nearby.

CARES4WOUNDS uses digital technology and artificial intelligence to provide a comprehensive system for wound assessment and management. Chronic wounds are particularly prevalent among older people in care facilities and this innovation streamlines the process for evaluation and treatment.

WheeLog!, an app for cellphones and computers, helps wheelchair users access barrier-free information about public spaces in Japan. It's a crowdsourced map showing the actual routes taken by wheelchair users. The app aims to create an inclusive society by organizing city strolling events, where participants experience using a wheelchair.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, contactless delivery suddenly became a critical tool to limit the spread of the disease and facilitate social distancing. The Malaysian Research Institute on Ageing launched a program in 2020 to respond to this need, developing an autonomous robot that could make contactless deliveries in long-term care settings.

The Matsudo Project offers free online Kayoinoba classes in response to the challenges of its aging population and the COVID-19 pandemic. These classes provide older people with opportunities to connect with each other and across generations and to become more confident to use technology in their everyday lives.

By leveraging smartphone technology with their community-based healthcare and monitoring system mobile app, Buddy HomeCare assists three target groups: older people with low incomes, older people with middle and high incomes, and youth with low incomes.

By combining existing surveillance technology with AI, SmartPeep offers “care-oriented optical sensors” that provide proactive alerts, drawing the caregivers’ attention to anomalies that occur in a resident’s room or a common area of the facility.

In order to relieve physical stress on caregivers, the No Lifting Association (NLA) has worked with Professor Hajime Asama to develop and popularize a system of “no-lift care,” which allows caregivers to care for the elderly without relying solely on the caregiver’s physical strength.

As people grow older, they experience many changes both mentally and physically, including bladder control issues. To address health problems associated with incontinence, a company called Triple W Japan K.K. has developed DFree, a wearable device that anticipates when the user will need to use the toilet.

AnshinNet is an ICT (Information and Communications Technology) tool that allows caregivers to quickly detect health irregularities in seniors. It is a health management system that focuses on the vital statistics that caregivers monitor daily, helping them find any shifts at an early stage.