EMERGENCE: Tackling Frailty - Facilitating the Emergence of Healthcare Robots from Labs into Service

急救网络旨在创建一个由研究人员、企业、最终用户、健康和社会护理专员和从业者、政策制定者和监管机构组成的可持续生态系统，以建立所需的知识和能力，使医疗机器人能够支持社区中虚弱的人。通过采用以人为中心的方法来开发医疗机器人技术，我们寻求提高面临虚弱风险的老年人的生活质量和独立性，同时帮助控制螺旋式上升的医疗成本。身体虚弱的人有不同的需要，但通常在与行动、自我照顾和家庭生活、社会活动和关系有关的活动中需要援助。通过支持人们更好地自我管理虚弱造成的疾病，以及改善个人和医疗从业者之间的信息和数据流，实现更及时的干预，可以加强医疗保健。为人口老龄化提供经济高效和高质量的支持是政府的高度优先事项。社区缺乏足够的社会照顾和资金削减，增加了本已捉襟见肘的医疗体系的压力。面对不断萎缩的护理劳动力，在提供必要质量的护理方面的能力差距在持续的新冠肺炎危机中尤为暴露。医疗机器人作为帮助人们改善独立生活的解决方案越来越被认可，它能够提供物理帮助，以及支持复杂的自我管理和医疗任务，当与患者数据整合时。Emerging网络将促进和促进医疗机器人解决方案的创新研究和开发，使其成为务实和可持续的解决方案，在社区中提供个性化、负担得起和包容的医疗和社会护理。我们将与临床合作伙伴和用户团体合作，将目前医疗和社会护理在评估、减少和管理脆弱性方面的挑战转化为一套明确和可操作的要求，以启发新的研究并使工程师能够开发适当的医疗机器人解决方案。我们还将为医疗机器人解决方案的设计和开发提供信息，解决与年龄相关的人的脆弱性和终端用户交互的评估、减少和自我管理，身体和认知障碍。这将帮助英国在医疗机器人的伦理设计、评估和生产方面发展跨领域的研究能力。为了能够设计和评估医疗机器人解决方案，我们将利用该联盟的活实验室测试床。其中包括覆盖西南部的布里斯托尔机器人实验室的辅助生活工作室、爱丁堡的国家机器人馆以及苏格兰东南部的米德洛斯式试验床健康创新中心、谢菲尔德的高级福祉研究中心和家庭实验室，以及覆盖东南部的赫特福德郡大学的机器人之家。至多10项资助的可行性研究将推动共同设计的高质量研究，这些研究将导致能够改变社区健康和护理的技术。网络还将建立安全和监管要求，以确保医疗机器人解决方案可以作为基于社区的脆弱护理包的一部分轻松部署和集成。此外，我们将找出护理人员和治疗师技能集中可能阻止他们有效使用机器人解决方案的差距，并为制定培训内容提供信息，以解决这些差距。这将培育监管、政治和商业环境以及劳动力技能，使英国成为使用机器人支持政府老龄化社会重大挑战的全球领先者。

The EMERGENCE network aims to create a sustainable eco-system of researchers, businesses, end-users, health and social care commissioners and practitioners, policy makers and regulatory bodies in order to build knowledge and capability needed to enable healthcare robots to support people living with frailty in the community.By adopting a person-centred approach to developing healthcare robotics technology we seek to improve the quality of life and independence of older people at risk of, and living with frailty, whilst helping to contain spiralling care costs. Individuals with frailty have different needs but, commonly, assistance is needed in activities related to mobility, self-care and domestic life, social activities and relationships. Healthcare can be enhanced by supporting people to better self-manage the conditions resulting from frailty, and improving information and data flow between individuals and healthcare practitioners, enabling more timely interventions.Providing cost-effective and high-quality support for an aging population is a high priority issue for the government. The lack of adequate social care provisions in the community and funding cuts have added to the pressures on an already overstretched healthcare system. The gaps in ability to deliver the requisite quality of care, in the face of a shrinking care workforce, have been particularly exposed during the ongoing Covid-19 crisis.Healthcare robots are increasingly recognised as solutions in helping people improve independent living, by having the ability to offer physical assistance as well as supporting complex self-management and healthcare tasks when integrated with patient data. The EMERGENCE network will foster and facilitate innovative research and development of healthcare robotic solutions so that they can be realised as pragmatic and sustainable solutions providing personalised, affordable and inclusive health and social care in the community.We will work with our clinical partners and user groups to translate the current health and social care challenges in assessing, reducing and managing frailty into a set of clear and actionable requirements that will inspire novel research and enable engineers to develop appropriate healthcare robotics solutions.We will also establish best practice guidelines for informing the design and development of healthcare robotics solutions, addressing assessment, reduction and self-management of frailty and end-user interactions for people with age-related sensory, physical and cognitive impairments. This will help the UK develop cross-cutting research capabilities in ethical design, evaluation and production of healthcare robots.To enable the design and evaluation of healthcare robotic solutions we will utilize the consortium's living lab test beds. These include the Assisted Living Studio in the Bristol Robotics Lab covering the South West, the National Robotarium in Edinburgh together with the Health Innovation South East Scotland's Midlothian test bed, the Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre and HomeLab in Sheffield, and the Robot House at the University of Hertfordshire covering the South East. Up to 10 funded feasibility studies will drive co-designed, high quality research that will lead to technologies capable of transforming community health and care.The network will also establish safety and regulatory requirements to ensure that healthcare robotic solutions can be easily deployed and integrated as part of community-based frailty care packages.In addition, we will identify gaps in the skills set of carers and therapists that might prevent them from using robotic solutions effectively and inform the development of training content to address these gaps. This will foster the regulatory, political and commercial environments and the workforce skills needed to make the UK a global leader in the use of robotics to support the government's ageing society grand challenge.