A team at UWE Bristol and Milbotix have won Innovate UK funding to deliver an initiative that seeks to re revolutionise dementia care with advanced wearable technology.
Dementia poses significant challenges globally. It often leads to communication difficulties, and people with dementia may become easily confused by new situations.
Milbotix is developing SmartSocks®, a family of sock-based wearable devices. SmartSocks® holds the potential to significantly improve dementia care by providing real-time insights into patients’ emotional states.
SmartSocks® has demonstrated capability within care homes to gather real-time actionable information enabling carers to rapidly build effective behaviour management strategies for people with dementia. For caregivers, a potential 75% reduction in time spent managing agitation is game changing, particularly considering difficulties social care is facing with care provision/staffing.
Milbotix now seeks to work with UWE Bristol to adapt SmartSocks® to allow the device to be used in healthcare. This will involve understanding differences in user-need (both for clinicians and patients) in a more acute setting. Currently, best practice is to manually record patient behaviour at set times of day. SmartSocks® can provide significantly more information at a lower cost. Data can be readily assimilated to allow better behaviour management plans to be put in place more rapidly.
The funding will help to deliver:
- Participatory design with healthcare stakeholders. This phase involves engaging stakeholders such as people with dementia, family caregivers, and healthcare professionals. Through focus groups and co-design workshops, participants will identify challenges in dementia care and explore how SmartSocks® can address these issues effectively.
- SmartSocks® pilot in a healthcare setting. A feasibility study will be conducted in an inpatient setting involving up to 10 dementia patients wearing SmartSocks® for four weeks. This study aims to assess the practicality and acceptance of SmartSocks® in an acute hospital setting.
Through stakeholder engagement, pilot studies, and robust project management, this project is poised to deliver tangible improvements in dementia care.
Chief Executive Officer Dr Zeke Steer commented on the project:
“We’re very excited to be working with UWE Bristol to advance research and technological innovation for dementia. The original research on SmartSocks® was completed at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory on the UWE Bristol campus. I’m delighted Milbotix is returning to its roots to undertake this impactful project which will help us understand how SmartSocks® can be adapted for use in more acute settings where behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia are most prevalent.”
Dr Jac Fennell, Senior Lecturer in Product Design at UWE Bristol commented:
“We are delighted to contribute our co-design expertise to this project and engage directly with those at the heart of dementia care. SmartSocks® is a fantastic innovation, and through participatory design and collaboration, we can build on Milbotix’s success in addressing real-world challenges in meaningful and impactful ways.”
Dr Marcela Munera, Associate Professor in Assistive Robotics at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory said:
“Thanks to this funding opportunity, we can collaborate with the community to design innovative wearable technologies that support users and healthcare staff. The SmartSocks offer a non-invasive solution for physiological monitoring.”
UWE Bristol and Milbotix received funding through the Innovate UK Design Foundations competition.