A feasibility study of co-developing an AI-based television-enabled application (TEA) to address social isolation and alleviating loneliness in older people.

孤独可以影响任何人，尽管老年人由于生活事件（例如，退休和丧亲之痛）。研究表明，孤独会对老年人的健康产生严重后果，并可能导致更多地使用医疗服务（如全科医生服务和A&E）。独居的老年人面临着更大的住院风险。有传统的交友服务;但到目前为止，很少有研究来看看它是否会有所不同。一个想法是实施一种创新的交友形式，使那些无法获得传统交友服务的人，在埃塞克斯难以到达的地区，以及那些不能安全出院，加上虚弱和缺乏社会联系的人，在康沃尔。这个项目旨在共同设计一个基于人工智能的电视应用程序（TEA），可以适应家庭电视机，这是普遍适用的，使老年人能够与交友服务连接。茶将使埃塞克斯和康威尔的老年人能够通过促进参与来增加社会联系的凝聚力和解决孤独问题。TEA的开发将由老年人通过参与式设计进行指导，最终用户也可以很容易地记住其名称-“TEA”。电视可以接触到广泛的，甚至难以接触到的老年人，使他们成为朋友，克服技术焦虑，抵制变革，甚至地理界限，建立共同兴趣的社区（如阅读群体）。我们的研究团队在与老年人共同设计产品方面拥有丰富的经验，已经成功地完成了一个关于年龄和技术的大型欧洲项目。我们将与一个由老年人、一些友好的志愿者、学术研究人员和小企业组成的小组共同设计这个电视适应工具（TEA）。该应用程序也将通过智能手机访问。我们设想，在埃塞克斯和康沃尔的老年人将受益于电视功能的交友服务;然而，真实的影响将只知道我们分析了我们收集的数据后，值得注意的是，该项目将提供第一个系统的洞察力交友服务的不同模式的价值，以解决老年人的孤独和孤立。因此，研究结果将有助于政府、地方当局和其他希望通过交友解决老年人孤独和孤立问题的人，并可在全国和全球范围内推广。

Loneliness can affect anyone, although older people are most at risk from chronic loneliness due to life events (e.g., retirement and bereavement). Research shows that loneliness can have serious consequences for the health of older people and that it can lead to increased use of healthcare services (such as GP services and A&E). Older people who live alone face an increased risk of being admitted to hospital as an inpatient.There are traditional befriending services; but so far, there has been very little research to see if it can make a difference. One idea is to implement an innovative form of befriending to enable those who cannot access the traditional befriending services e.g., in hard to reach areas in Essex and those who cannot get safely discharged from hospital coupled with frailty and lack of social connections, in Cornwall.This project aims at co-designing an AI-based television-enabled application (TEA) that can adapt a home television set, that is universally useful for enabling older people to connect with befriending services. TEA will enable older people in Essex and Cornwell, to increase the cohesion of social connection and address loneliness by facilitating engagement. The development of TEA will be guided by older people through participatory design and can also be easily remembered by the end-users by its name- "TEA".The conversant use of technology, i.e., television can reach widespread, even hard-to-reach older population to befrienders, overcoming technology anxiety, resistance to change, and even geographical boundaries to create communities of shared interest (such a reading groups).Our research team, with extensive experience in co-designing products with older people, have successfully worked on a large European project on age and technology. We will be co-designing this television adaption tool (TEA), with a panel of older people, some befriending volunteers, academic researchers and small businesses. This application will be also accessible through smartphones. We envisage that older people in Essex and Cornwall will benefit from the TV-enabled befriending service; however, the real impact will only be known after we have analysed the data we collect.Significantly, the project will provide the first systematic insight into the value of the different models of befriending services for addressing loneliness and isolation in older people. The findings will therefore be useful for government, local authorities and others looking to address loneliness and isolation in older people through befriending and can be replicated nationwide as well as globally.