Digitalizing Senior Care in Hong Kong: Exploring AI-assisted Interactive Technology to Improve Senior Population’s Mental, Social, and Spiritual Health

The global increase in the elderly population has drawn significant attention to the issue of elderly care, particularly in densely populated regions such as Hong Kong. This demographic shift has underscored the considerable challenges in delivering high-quality care for older people, especially in residential facilities. Individuals residing in these facilities often contend with issues of loneliness, social isolation, and a diminishing sense of autonomy, which can adversely affect their physical and mental well-being (Gardiner et al., 2021).

While research has widely recognized autonomy as pivotal in promoting well-being (Deci & Ryan, 2013), providing adequate enrichment activities alongside health management remains challenging for practitioners and caregivers. The emerging popularity of digital technology use in elderly care (Goumopoulos, 2017) presents a new opportunity to utilize AI-assisted tools in social enrichment for the elderly. Responding to the growing demand for responsible AI applications in healthcare (Upadhyay et al., 2023), in this study, we designed an interactive AI-assisted program for seniors in Hong Kong that will guide them through a series of physical and spiritual exercises.

Collaborating with local care facilities, we first conducted a pilot study, utilizing the method of focus groups, with 20 seniors in residential care to evaluate their technology use habits, needs, and concerns, and to engage them in the program designing process. Building on the information collected from the pilot study and existing literature, we developed an interactive mobile program featuring haptics in sync with meditative music and AI voice assistant. The program features therapeutic haptics technology, aiming to help the elderly perform a series of gestures in sync with meditation music, visual cues, and AI voice assistant through mobile devices. Haptic technology can effectively improve seniors’ hand dexterity and cognitive control, and when paired with meditative music, it can further improve their mindfulness and reduce abnormal levels of stress, anxiety, and social isolation (Hsu et al., 2021).

With help from local senior care facilities and volunteers, we then introduced the program to more than 200 seniors in residential care. After the initial launch, five monthly interactive sessions, 45 minutes each, will be administrated and after each session, the team will invite senior participants to complete a post-session survey to evaluate their mental, social, and spiritual well-being, and to collect feedback on the program. Our preliminary survey result from the initial launch suggested significant improvement in seniors’ cognitive function, social well-being, and overall perceived quality of life. With five consecutive longitudinal cohort surveys to be conducted in the following months, we aim to discern and analyze alterations and enhancements in the overall well-being and life quality of seniors over time.

This ground-breaking program represents the pioneering implementation of its kind in Hong Kong. It contributed to our theoretical comprehension of interactive therapeutic haptic technology and AI assistant within the context of senior care but will also yield a practical prototype. This prototype can subsequently undergo further refinement and widespread application, potentially benefiting millions of seniors worldwide by providing reliable AI-assisted physical, social, and spiritual enrichment activities.