DEsign for healthy ageing: a smart system to decrease LONELINESS for older people (DELONELINESS)

在快速老龄化的社会中，孤独是一个日益严重的健康问题。正如Age UK在2018年指出的那样，有140万老年人认为自己经常孤独，预计到2025年，50岁以上的老年人将增加到200万。三分之一以上的老年人普遍感到孤独，孤独通常被定义为“一个人所期望的社会关系与所实现的社会关系之间的差距”。孤独的主观感觉与一系列负面结果有关，包括身体和精神疾病的患病率增加，全因死亡率和自我伤害的风险。虽然卫生和社会服务专业人员可能会忽视孤独问题，但COVID-19大流行可能会因封锁而加速这些问题。社会支持网络、社区活动和家庭的机会减少，突出表明需要发现和支持那些在家孤独的人。至关重要的是，要改进确定孤独者孤独感的方法，以便及时有效地进行干预。该提案旨在开发一种智能监测和通信系统，将多功能电子设备内置于纺织品中，用作可穿戴设备和家居家具，以测量老年人的孤独水平。及时和准确地识别老年人的孤独感将使他们能够在家中做出明智的护理选择。本研究的主要目的是通过定制的多传感监测来确定不同程度的孤独感。这可以用来识别那些有孤独风险的人，并强调有针对性的干预的优先事项。及时采取行动识别和帮助孤独的老年人将有助于降低发生严重医疗保健问题的风险，并帮助他们独立生活。DELONELLOND是一个跨学科的项目，汇集了来自社会老年学，心理学，设计，智能复合材料和人工智能（AI）的学术专家，以及工业合作伙伴和政策制定者：（i）了解孤独的条件和（ii）开发一个智能系统来测量和监测孤独。多元化的团队代表了来自不同种族、性别认同和职业阶段的个人。

Loneliness is a growing health concern in a rapidly ageing society. As Age UK noted in 2018, 1.4 million older people class themselves as often lonely, and it is estimated this will rise to 2 million people over the aged of 50 by 2025. Loneliness, typically defined as a "discrepancy between one's desired and achieved levels of social relations" is generally experienced by over one third of older people. The subjective feeling of loneliness has been associated with a range of negative outcomes including increased prevalence of physical and mental illness, all-cause mortality, and risk of self-harm. Whilst issues of loneliness may be overlooked by health and social service professionals, the COVID-19 pandemic could have accelerated these issues due to lockdown. Reduced access to social support networks, community events and family highlight the need to detect and support those who are lonely at home. It is of paramount importance to refine methods of identifying loneliness in those who are isolated to allow timely and effective intervention. This proposal aims to develop a smart monitoring and communication system with multifunctional electronics built into textiles used as wearables and home furniture to measure loneliness levels in older people. The timely and accurate identification of loneliness of older people will enable informed care choices at home. The main objective of this research is to determine different levels of loneliness via bespoke multi-sensing monitoring. This could be used to identify those at risk of loneliness and highlight priorities for targeted intervention. Prompt actions to identify and help lonely older people would help to decrease the risk of developing serious healthcare issues and help support them to live independently. DELONELINESS is an interdisciplinary project bringing academic experts from Social Gerontology, Psychology, Design, Smart Composite Material, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) and industrial partners as well as policy makers to: (i) to understand the conditions of being lonely and (ii) to develop a smart system to measure and monitor loneliness. The diverse team represents individuals from a range of ethnicities, gender identifications and career stages.