Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Mar 19, 2020
Date Accepted: Jul 22, 2020
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Quality of Care Perceived by Older Patients and Caregivers Does Not Suffer from Social Robot Assistance: A Noninferiority Randomised Controlled Trial
ABSTRACT
Background:
Society is facing a global shortage of 17 million healthcare workers, along with increasing healthcare demands from a growing number of older adults. Social robots are being considered as solutions to part of this problem.
Objective:
To evaluate the quality of care perceived by patients and caregivers for an integrated care pathway in an outpatient clinic using a social robot for patient-reported outcome measurement (PROM) interviews versus the currently used professional interviews.
Methods:
Multicentre two parallel groups, non-blinded, randomised controlled trial testing for non-inferiority of the quality of care delivered through robot-assisted care. The randomisation was by computer-generated table. The setting concerned two outpatient clinics in the period July–December 2019. Of 419 subsequent patients visiting the participating outpatient clinics, 110 older patients fit the recruitment criteria. Inclusion criteria were ability to speak and read Dutch and being assisted by a participating healthcare professional. Exclusion criteria were serious hearing or vision problems, serious cognitive problems, paranoia or similar psychiatric problems. The intervention concerned a social robot conducting a 36-item PROM. As main outcome measure the Customised Consumer Quality Index (CQI) was used, as reported by patient and caregiver for the outpatient pathway of care.
Results:
In total 80 intermediately frail older patients (38 females, total mean age 77.8 (60-91) years) were included and randomly assigned to the intervention (40) and control groups (40). There was no significant difference in the total patient CQI scores of the patients with the robot pathway (M=9.19, SD=0.83, n=38) and those in the control group (M=9.00, SD=0.70, n=38); P=.29, 95% CI (-0.16 to 0.54), and no significant difference for their caregivers (intervention group M=9.15, SD=0.78, n=32; control group M=9.12, SD=0.61, n=36); P=.85, 95% CI (-0.31 to 0.37). No harm or unintended effects occurred.
Conclusions:
Geriatric patients and their informal caregivers valued robot-assisted and non-robot-assisted care pathways equally. Clinical Trial: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03857789, status completed.
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