Towards ‘Hospices Without Walls’

CONTEXT

By 2040, 160,000 more people in England and Wales will need palliative care, provided the current mortality trends continue. This means an increase of 42.4% in palliative and end-of-life care needs, within the next 20 years. Healthcare systems must start to transform, adapt and prepare now, as the urgent need for well designed technologically enhanced health and care solutions towards the end of life is inevitable.

Hospices are one main avenue for provision of palliative and end-of-life care. However, they are deemed expensive and essentially unsustainable in current form, especially in the face of the growing demand. A reform is inevitable; 

Where and how could a symbiosis of Robotics and Human Centred Design facilitate alternative and novel future hospice care scenarios – focusing on ‘enhanced independence’ and ‘alternative access’? 

There is evidence that Artificial Intelligence can improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare; including quick identification of symptoms and mapping societal health, smart sensors to help with diagnostics, and tracking patients’ physical and mental wellbeing.

Palliative & end-of-life care is delicately, and rather uniquely, positioned on one end of the healthcare provision spectrum. With its holistic and multi-faceted network of physiological, psychological, social, and spiritual support, and complex patient pathways, Palliative care exposes major challenges as well as unique opportunities for introduction of AI, particularly robotics. Major opportunities of robotics in Palliative care include Assistive, Therapeutic, Social, and Educational uses.

Additionally, there are wider calls to reclaim and reimagine end-of-life as a ‘human’, rather than a mere ‘medical’ domain. Hence, moving to ‘humanise’ death. Both the robotics and human centred and inclusive approach need a wider transdisciplinary discourse, outlook and collaboration.