Accenture Uses Artificial Intelligence for Elder Care

Accenture has completed a pilot program that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and the ease of voice to help older people manage the challenges of navigating their care delivery and well-being.

The Accenture Liquid Studio in London developed an AI-powered platform (the Accenture Platform) that can learn user behaviors and preferences and suggest activities to support the overall physical and mental health of individuals ages 70 and older.

The Accenture platform, which runs on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud, includes a ‘Family and Carer’ portal that lets family and caregivers check on the individual’s daily activities, such as whether they have taken their medication or made new requests for caregivers.

The Accenture platform can also spot abnormalities in behavior and alert family or friends, based on user defined permissions.

Other services provided by the Accenture platform helped participants find local events as well as potential new friends, encouraging them to become more active and social.

It also gave them better access to reading and learning materials, music, daily exercises, appointment reminders and required them to confirm when they completed the assignment. The services in the pilot were delivered through the new Amazon Echo Show.

The Accenture platform was tested over a three-month pilot period, from August to October 2017, with a focus group of approximately 60 people aged at least 70 years old and living independently.

A further 20 participants brought the Echo Show into their homes to interact with the technology in a more natural environment. The testing phase helped identify some of the most challenging tasks within the home and aided in the development of solutions built into the Accenture platform.

The Accenture platform’s combination of voice activation, on-screen prompts and underlying cloud-based AI technology provided the participants with new ways of doing a range of tasks and extending their well-being.

In building the platform, Accenture used the self-service Amazon Alexa Skills Kit to customize the AI to power the devices and employed advanced secure cloud technologies such as AWS Lambda and Amazon S3.