TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION

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.

To address Thailand’s increasing intergenerational friction, a TV production company, Boonmerit, launched an online media platform called “Manoottangwai” (multigenerational). The initiative 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 (financial, physical, and emotional) requires preparation.

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.

A trip to an unfamiliar place for a wheelchair user or older person with limited mobility can be daunting. WheeLog!, an application for cellphones and computers, addresses these challenges by creating an interactive map that allows users to clearly see the accessibility of public spaces, sharing barrier-free-related information from all over Japan—and hopefully around the world in the near future.

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 Consortium quickly adapted their long-term care prevention program to face the challenges posed by COVID-19. They developed an online version of their "Kayoinoba" social gatherings to provide older people with the opportunity to connect with each other and across generations and to become more confident in their ability to use tablet technology.

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.