JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Dementia poses a significant challenge in India. Rising incidence rates, limited resources, and restricted clinician access contribute to a staggering 90% gap in diagnosis and care. Conversational technology provides a natural user interface with potential to promote the independence, well-being, and safety of people living with dementia (PLWD) at home. However, the feasibility of implementing such technology to support PLWD across diverse cultural and economic settings remains underexplored.

Objective:

We introduce a cultural feasibility study of conversational robots for dementia care in India, an underserved cultural context in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) for aging and dementia care.

Methods:

We involved 29 stakeholders, including PLWD, caregivers, and dementia care professionals. We evaluated: 1) engagement of PLWD with three conversational robots with varying interactive modalities (a voice agent, a virtual affective robot, and an embodied robot), 2) robot acceptance, and 3) stakeholder perspectives on the benefits and challenges of deploying conversational AI in India.

Results:

PLWD accepted and were willing to engage with conversational robots in verbal dialogue. Stakeholders perceived the technology as beneficial for supporting daily tasks at home, reducing loneliness, and enhancing cognitive function. We identified design adaptations to address feasibility challenges in India, including the need to: adapt interaction style to use kind tone, appreciative language, and customizable facial expressions; improve speech recognition for local accent interpretation and noisy settings; and introduce prototypes in local clinics to promote familiarity.

Conclusions:

This work offers novel insights into cultural acceptance, human-robot engagement, perceived utility for dementia care, and key design implications to integrating conversational AI into care settings in India.