Accessible AI-based Voice Therapy for Diabetes Management

糖尿病影响着全球470万人。英国，每年花费NHS至少100亿英镑，相当于其整个预算的10%（Diabetes UK，2020）。37%的70岁以上的糖尿病患者（170万人）。有很多数字应用程序可用于帮助预防和管理病情，许多老年人认为这很有帮助。然而，这些应用程序只能在智能手机上使用。我们从研究中了解到，65岁以上的人中有60%不使用智能手机。因此，我们需要找到方法，将适当的风险分层措施落实到位，以帮助预防糖尿病，并在糖尿病发生时进行管理。这是我们项目的重点。该项目的主要合作伙伴MiiCare已经拥有一个语音控制的智能个人助理（VIPA），有点像Alexa或Google（没有背景记录），目前为老年痴呆症患者提供支持。通过将我们的一个设备放在家里，它可以使用人工智能来了解个人的日常生活活动和整体健康状况，并使用适当的健康治疗护理计划和轻推，帮助老年人保持健康。用户不需要智能手机，也不需要了解技术。我们的设备是预先配置好的。它只需要插上电源，就可以开始提供帮助。对于我们的项目，我们正在与数字健康应用程序的领先提供商DDM合作。DDM已经有了专门帮助预防和管理糖尿病的平台。我们计划共同努力，调整DDM现有的一个经过临床验证的程序，并将其整合到我们的语音助手中。由于来自某些社区的人患糖尿病的可能性高达6倍，从长远来看，我们还计划将其提供给社区语言，如Panjabi，这意味着老年人将能够通过友好、直观、基于语音的助手，在舒适的家中获得为他们量身定制的支持。这可以帮助他们保持健康的生活方式，预防糖尿病的发展。这对他们和他们的家庭都有好处，也有利于NHS --减少治疗费用和全科医生的压力。

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.