Development of PARO Interventions for Dementia Patients in Dutch Psycho-geriatric Care

Social Robots are believed to have great potential for long term care. The uptake of Social Robots in daily care provision will depend on demonstrated added value of such systems in practice. To assess the added value, the availability of a technical system as such is insufficient. Interventions need to be defined describing the goal, target group, environment and how care staff should act to pursue effective application of a robot system. For the seal robot Paro three such interventions have been developed in collaboration with psychogeriatric care professionals. The interventions provide information on the aims of PARO application in daily care for psycho-geriatric patients and describe concrete outcomes to monitor the added value of robot interventions. The developed interventions also outline the application of PARO in care for a subsequent randomized clinical trial (RCT).