An intelligent assistant to provide social support to informal caregivers of people with dementia: Alzaid Assistant

More than 50 million people live with dementia worldwide and it is expected to reach 82 million in 2030 and 150 million in 2050. Most of these people are cared for by informal caregivers at home, i.e. people who are not paid for their work and who are usually family members without professional training. The lack of skills and knowledge necessary to carry out this work causes stress and leads to increased levels of overload, anxiety, and depression in informal caregivers. This paper presents work in progress on the design of an intelligent assistant (IA), named Alzaid Assistant, for informal caregivers of people with dementia (PwD). This IA aims to promote social support in informal caregivers of PwD by providing them with information and strengthening coping strategies for problem solving and emotional regulation to reduce levels of overload, anxiety, and depression. Particularly, the phases of requirements elicitation, design, implementation, and preliminary validations are presented. A high-fidelity prototype of the IA was evaluated by 20 participants using a questionnaire based on the technology acceptance model to assess the perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. Alzaid Assistant was perceived as quite likely useful and quite likely easy to use by potential users.