Accessible AI-based Voice Therapy for Diabetes Management

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Diabetes affects 4.7 million people in the?UK, costing the NHS at least £10 billion a year, equivalent to 10% of its entire budget (Diabetes UK, 2020). 37% of all diabetes patients aged over 70 (1.7m people).There are lots of digital apps that can be used to help prevent and manage the condition, which many older people find helpful.However, these apps can only be used on a smartphone. We know from research that 60% of those over 65 do not use a smartphone. Therefore, we need to find ways to put the appropriate risk stratification measures in place to help both prevent diabetes in the first place and manage it if it does develop.That is the focus of our project.MiiCare, the lead partner for this project, already has a voice-controlled intelligent personal assistant (VIPA), a little like Alexa or Google (without the background recording), which currently provides support to older people living with dementia. By placing one of our devices in the home, it learns about individuals' activities of daily living and overall health using Artificial Intelligence and using the appropriate health therapeutics care plan and nudges, helps older people to stay well.Users don't need a smartphone, or to know about technology. Our device comes preconfigured. It just needs to be plugged in and it can start to help.For our project we are teaming up with DDM, a leading provider of digital health apps. DDM already has platforms that specifically help prevent and manage diabetes. We plan to work together to adapt one of DDM's existing, clinically proven programmes, and incorporate it into our voice-based assistant.And because people from some communities are up to 6x more likely to develop diabetes, in the longer term we also plan to make it available in community languages such as Panjabi, and Urdu.What this means is that older people will be able to access support tailored to them in the comfort of their home via a friendly, intuitive, voice-based assistant. This can help them maintain a healthy lifestyle and prevent the development of diabetes.This benefits them and their families, and it also benefits the NHS -- reducing costs of treatment and pressure on GPs.