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Healthy Ageing
As technology advances, so too does our life expectancy.
Across the world people can now expect to reach 72 years old, an increase of 5.5 years in less than two decades.
Naturally, with people living for longer the population is getting older.
This change brings a new kind of healthcare challenge: how we can ensure quality of life within the ageing population?
Once again, technology is proving itself crucial when it comes to finding a solution. And the UK is at the forefront, putting resource and investment into answering this challenge. At present, there are nearly 3,700 companies in the UK medical-tech sector, generating £21 billion and producing medical devices and diagnostics. Powered by a mixture of researchers, scientists, engineers, designers and National Health Service (NHS) clinicians, it has already made important inroads.
Step forward Cardiff University. Researchers there have provided compelling evidence that the adoption of AI in diagnosis and prognosis could create substantial savings in both time and resource. Trials showed that AI was able to provide an equally accurate and reliable prognosis for cardiovascular diseases compared with traditional methods. Crucially, the machine-learning techniques required no expertise or human interaction – meaning no bottlenecks in the process.
Technology can also be used to address other issues associated with ageing, such as loneliness, which has been found to have as detrimental an effect on health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Aiming to tackle this issue is Consequential Robotics – a service-robotics company which provides solutions for in-home care. Most recently it has launched MiRo, an autonomous robot that offers companionship in the home. Designed to be entertaining and emotionally engaging, MiRo interacts with humans as a pet would – it can also pick up on commands and recognise when something is wrong. It has already been proven to reduce feelings of loneliness – and after trials in a UK care home, it brought residents increased levels of happiness and comfort. Although designed in the UK, MiRo is manufactured in Shenzhen – and after its launch at Hong Kong’s GREAT Festival of Innovation the world’s cutest robot has developed a wide following in Asia.
In the UK, the issue of the ageing population is being given serious thought – and through the innovative application of new technologies, there are breakthroughs every day that are transforming the future of healthcare and improving the quality of lives.
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