Understanding older adults’ perceptions and attitudes towards a telehealth robot

Background: With the growth in the aging population and caregivers who need healthcare support, telehealth tools such as assistive robots are emerging as feasible options to augment care for older adults. Telehealth robots provide a medium for healthcare personnel and/or caregivers to remotely carry out healthcare tasks without requiring the care recipient to commute to the healthcare center or for the caregiver to travel to the recipient’s home. However, current telehealth robots are not fully functional or adaptable for some of these tasks and use case scenarios. Moreover, for the care of older adults, the perceptions, preferences, and attitudes of the older adults are not factored into the design of the robots to make them usable and useful for them. A deeper understanding of their needs, perceptions, and disposition towards telehealth robots is required. Research Aim: This research investigated older adults’ perceptions and attitudes toward a telehealth robot supporting their health checkups at home. Methods: We conducted a mixed-methods study with ten older adults to understand their perceptions of telehealth robots in a home environment. We showed them videos of the robot prototype carrying out healthcare tasks and assessed their perceptions about this type of robot in their home and other use cases that they would envisage. Results: The older adults conveyed overall positive first impressions towards the safety and flexibility of the soft robotic arm capabilities. Some participants who had negative views of the robot still found them useful, diligent, capable, and accurate. Conclusion: This research allowed us to investigate older adults’ perceptions and attitudes towards a novel telehealth robot. We identified a broad range of preferences and potential healthcare use cases to guide design requirements for robots in telehealth contexts.