In Newcastle, inside the University, there is a research center entirely dedicated to innovation and aging. To direct it an Italian, Nicola (Nic) Palmarini, who after 20 years of work at IBM and studying the applications of artificial intelligence to healthy aging, was called by the British government to run the NICA, National Innovation Center for Aging. Financed by the British state with 40 million pounds, the center of Newcastle is a real hotbed of ideas, as the director tells us.
Nic Palmarini, what can technology do for the elderly?
“It can improve their quality of life, affect their health, interpret their needs. But let’s take some examples. In collaboration with Piaggio Fast Forward we are studying the Gita robot to make it capable of encouraging elderly people to walk more, helping them at the same time: it is a kind of trolley that can carry up to 23kg of weight – therefore useful for shopping – which, thanks to sophisticated technology, faithfully follows the person and indirectly suggests moving and interacting. Again, thanks to artificial intelligence combined with the internet of things, we can better understand how elderly people live alone, and therefore help them, based on behaviors with suggestions on nutrition, activity, safety “.
Artificial intelligence sometimes raises fears …
“As always it depends on how the tools are used. Thanks to AI and machine learning programs, for example, we were able to enhance an app to do yoga classes at a distance and turn it into a program that not only understands if you are performing the movement correctly, providing you with indications to correct yourself, but also if you are satisfied with what you are doing. Thus the service is more personalized and effective, even when users cannot give direct feedback because they suffer from more or less serious cognitive pathologies “.
And the elderly? Can they improve the technology?
“Absolutely. This is the meaning of our community called VOICE: today we have affiliated over 8 thousand people over 55 who are our point of reference. They are the ones who test our solutions, who pose the problems that need to be solved, who tell us what they really want. For now the community is active in the UK and the United States but we are working to start one also in Italy. Healthy aging also depends to a large extent on the social context, on lifestyles, and listening to and representing different communities and cultures is crucial to accelerate and broaden the landscape of solutions and opportunities. And it is necessary to do it throughout the entire life span, exploiting the malleability of the aging process ”.
Yes, the idea is to act on longevity. How you do it?
“Each of us is like a block of marble that is chiseled over time by its actions: we must stimulate the right biological mechanisms that help us age in health. For this we have partnered with some companies that provide longevity services and we have created a program – Longevity as a service – who wants to make available to the widest possible number of people services that help to age in health. Among the companies we work with is SoLongevity, an Italian start-up that does scientific research on supplements and personalized immunosenescence prevention programs “.
Is it enough to act on people to ensure healthy aging?
“No, it is also essential to create an environment that allows adults to age well and the elderly to live better. With the help of our community, for example, we have designed an intergenerational kitchen that grows together with those who live there, evolves over time. If there are small children, drawers and doors are secured, if there are elderly people, the wall units can be lowered and everything becomes easier to reach, and so on. But we must also think about the community space: always at the suggestion of “our” elders, today in Newcastle we have developed the “Happy to chat bench”, Benches where those who sit down want to chat. Everyone in the city knows this and it works: it fights loneliness and increases social cohesion ”.
(Article published in Salute on 29/07/21)
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