Innovation: PARO therapeutic robot seal

Japan and international

AAI Domains:

• Capacity and enabling environment (use of ICT)

• Participation in society (social connectedness)

There are an increasing number of people living with dementia, often for many years and this places greater pressures on their carers and wider society to meet the needs of people living with dementia and those who are supporting them. There are many choices ahead about how societies manage to support people faced with the reality of living with dementia, particularly when it can result in socially challenging behaviour.

Encouraging social interaction and calming people with dementia when they are agitated can contribute to improving their quality of life and reducing the strain on carers. Public support for informal care giving is an important part of a strategy for active and healthy ageing is one of five priority interventions for the WHO in Europe’s strategy for healthy ageing.

PARO is a robotic baby seal that has been developed by AIST, a Japanese technology company, and available for use since 2003. The PARO is equipped with five types of sensors that enable it to respond and interact with people with dementia by mimicking some of the behaviours of animals and pets that people have been familiar with over their life time. It has been designed as a baby seal so that people with dementia recognise it but do not confuse it as a real pet.

PARO did not prove to be particularly successful with older people in long-term care institutions in Japan although more than 3,000 were sold at a cost of around £4,000/€4,500/$5,000, often to people who wanted a pet but may not have been able to keep one due to their homes not being suitable. Having cost over $15 million to develop there was clearly a strong commercial imperative to market PARO in other countries and they have been adopted in North America, Europe and Australia.

Studies of the effects of PARO suggest that they may reduce patient stress and that of their caregivers, stimulates interaction between patients and caregivers and have positive psychological effects through improving motivation and empowering people through a sense of achievement. However, the quality of these studies is often low and the evidence base is far from reliable although this is being addressed with a series of randomised control trials in Australia and China as well as evaluations in the UK.

In relation to active ageing, the PARO seal is one of many technology based social innovations that provide what appears to be an improved form of care for older adults living with dementia and this has consequent benefits for their care-givers. It represents a novel use of ICT but the underpinning ethos is to encourage social interaction and connectedness among older people who can find it difficult to relate and interact appropriately with people providing care for them.

Given the increasing number of people experience dementia there is a pressing need to develop and evaluate innovations that improve care for older people suffering with the condition and to provide innovative ways of reducing the stress on carers.

Websites and links

PARO Robots

The Guardian

Wall Street Journal