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(如退休和丧亲)而面临长期孤独的风险最大。研究表明，孤独可能会对老年人的健康造成严重后果，并可能导致更多人使用医疗服务(如全科医生服务和急诊室)。独居的老年人面临着更大的住院风险。有传统的友谊服务；但到目前为止，很少有研究表明这是否会产生影响。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，例如在埃塞克斯难以到达的地区，以及那些不能安全出院的人，在康沃尔因虚弱和缺乏社交关系而出院。该项目旨在共同设计一种基于人工智能的电视应用程序(TEA)，它可以适配家庭电视机，这对帮助老年人连接交友服务普遍有用。茶将使埃塞克斯和康威尔的老年人能够增加社会关系的凝聚力，并通过促进参与来解决孤独问题。茶的发展将由老年人通过参与式设计来指导，也可以很容易地被最终用户记住它的名字-“茶”。熟练地使用技术，即电视可以接触到广泛的，甚至难以接触到的老年人口的朋友，克服技术焦虑，对变化的抵制，甚至地理界限，创建共同的兴趣社区(这样一个阅读小组)。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，已经成功地参与了一个关于年龄和技术的大型欧洲项目。我们将与一群老年人、一些成为朋友的志愿者、学术研究人员和小企业一起共同设计这个电视改编工具(TEA)。这个应用程序也可以通过智能手机访问。我们预计埃塞克斯郡和康沃尔郡的老年人将受益于电视支持的好友服务；然而，真正的影响只有在我们分析了我们收集的数据后才能知道。有意义的是，该项目将首次系统地洞察不同模式的好友服务对解决老年人孤独和孤立的价值。因此，这些发现将对政府、地方当局和其他希望通过结交朋友来解决老年人的孤独和孤立问题的人有用，并可以在全国和全球范围内复制。

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.