Elden

Elden is an AI, Natural language processing and blockchain-enabled healthcare management application catering to neglected elders in Nigeria as well as their caregivers.

Now more than ever, elder abuse, neglect and ageism have become more rampant due to the lack of social support systems by the government for the elderly. According to CDC, “Abuse, including neglect and exploitation, is experienced by about 1 in 10 people aged 60 and older who live at home.” The main problem lies in the inadequate health care services provided for seniors in Nigeria as well as the stress that this poses on caregivers. To further buttress this point, according to statistsa, 9.4 million people were aged 60 years or older in Nigeria. Of these 9.4 million people it was further discovered that 20% are abused daily, according to The University of Third Age Nigeria. 

Moreover, changes in the family structure due to increased modernization have resulted in a noticeable reduction in the number of primary caregivers available to the elders in Nigeria. Usually, family members are the ones to take care of these elders but due to the fast-paced nature of our modern world, this is not the case anymore. With this in mind, elders are now prone to more cases of abuse and neglect. This is therefore resulting in the decline of the physical and mental health of elders which in turn causes premature mortality and cognitive decline. This is alarming indeed and hence needs to be treated with immediate urgency.

“ELDEN” is a one-of-a-kind senior care management application for both seniors and caregivers. Our application is multifaceted as it has multiple functionalities for three target users: Elders, family members and caregivers. For caregivers, Elden effectively eases their jobs by providing an AI and blockchain-enabled electronic patient record system that would help caregivers make personal profiles for each senior in their care and its inbuilt reminders would further aid stressed-out caregivers in remembering to provide seniors with adequate care they need. For caregivers also, Elden provides a medicine tracking feature as well as a meal planner which recommends appropriate meals to the caregiver based on the individualised profile and medical condition of the elder.

For the second group of target users, family members, Elden provides a ‘helping hands’ feature which helps busy family members to monitor the health of their loved ones in real life.

For seniors, in order to keep their minds active, there would be a plethora of brain-stimulating games to keep their minds busy. This would be especially helpful for seniors with cognitive diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Dementia.

Finally, the unique selling point of our application is Elden Mesh which is a segment of the app where Elders can connect with other elders and chat with them. This; therefore, helps to create a sense of unity and togetherness amongst seniors making them feel wanted and cared for. Most notably the colour scheme of our eyes is catered towards ageing eyes.

45.2%. This striking number was revealed through a study to be the percentage of elders aged 60 to 90 who were depressed in a study carried out at 'Uyo teaching hospital' in Nigeria. It is clear to see that a great deal of senior citizens are suffering in silence and this is why Elders are the main target population of our application 'Elden'. Elden would provide a warm and welcoming community for elders to interact with one another as well as with a chatbot. According to frontiers, 'Loneliness has been an emerging issue in society in recent years and has been linked to depression, irritability, and preoccupation with negative self-related thoughts, alongside a 26% increase in the risk of premature death.' Our app; therefore provides a solution for this issue.

Our application also allows family members the opportunity always to be able to monitor their elderly ones remotely from their mobile devices, which reduces the worry that family members often have. This, therefore, reduces the levels of anxiety that family members often have to deal with due to their inability to keep track of their elder relatives' health. In addition, caregivers are also underserved as a report from the Family Caregiver Alliance found that 40%-70% of caregivers have symptoms of depression. Our app, therefore, has the potential to improve their unhealthy lifestyles of sleep deprivation, social isolation and depression.

Our team consists of two fierce individuals who are highly passionate about the intersection between computer science and healthcare. With members both originating from the same country, Nigeria, our team members have first-hand experience with the worrisome state of Nigeria's healthcare system and as a result, they have an unquenchable drive to fix the issue at hand.

Emmanuela, the team leader, is experienced in certain fields of technology namely artificial intelligence and NLP whilst Joshua is experienced in the field of UI/UX design and market research. Emmanuela's passion for computer science for social good shines through her many works as she attended the Girls Who Code summer program in 2021, currently champions her school's robotics team and owns a non-profit called 'CodEd' Which aims to tackle the inadequate nature of computer science education in Nigerian public schools. Emmanuela Ilok also interned at a fintech organization 'eTranzact International PLC' where she enhanced her skills through the observation of software engineer experts around her. Joshua Okocha took programming courses on code academy and got the certification of completion for both entry-level and intermediate courses, he also worked on some projects with the use of his python knowledge using data visualization packages like matplotlib to create graphs that record trends on Netflix shows watched by people and the genres they fall under. We also have experience in taking care of elders' needs in our various homes and are very familiar with the requirements of an elder. 

Our team also has an experienced mentor who is a seasoned expert in NLP and machine learning. Through his guidance, we believe that we will be best positioned for success during this journey of our product's development.

We are well positioned to deliver this solution as we also possess the necessary research and trend analysis skills enabling us to monitor the health trends and adjust the features based on the changing trends in a way that would best adapt to those trends while improving overall user comfortability.

Our team has done research in the health field and designed the app to counter cognitive diseases and conditions accompanied by old age. We have also fully accounted for necessary app features in UI/UX design that tackle pain points. We have also conducted a few comparative analyses on similar elder care apps and made ours to effectively meet the user's needs and improve upon the flaws and overlooked aspects of similar apps. Through verbal surveys and feedback, we have been able to clearly identify major focus areas.

This is the first elder care app in Nigeria. Our app is multifaceted with multiple functionalities and utilizes carefully crafted colour schemes (one of the only apps that take the ageing eyes of seniors into consideration) to suit user comfortability.

Our app has a human-like AI conversational chatbot that seniors can talk to when they feel lonely and serves as a way to curb depression which is very common among elders who stay at home due to the inconvenience of moving around.

According to CDC " Some estimates of major depression in older people living in the community range from less than 1% to about 5% but rise to 13.5% in those who require home healthcare and 11.5% in older hospitalized patients”. Our solution plans to provide a way to prevent depression rates in elders who require home healthcare from rising above 5%. It enables broader positive impacts as we minimize the effects of cognitive diseases that come with old age, as well as decrease depression rates.

We are looking to implement our app in four nursing homes in Lagos. These nursing homes include Holy Family Home for the Elderly – Regina Mundi, Rock garden Homecare Agency, WellCare Home Medicals Limited, and Family Ark Mission International. We currently have connections with doctors within these four nursing homes and plan to reach out to them regarding implementing our solution in their nursing homes.

 We also aim to increase the accuracy and human-like conversational model of our AI chatbot to 96%. We plan to achieve this by testing the model on one of the nursing homes before implementation, by doing this we can monitor usage and improve user AI experience and accuracy through feedback from this initial implementation and by running continuous human scenario-based conversations with our AI. We currently have a mentor who is well-equipped and experienced in AI and Machine learning and would be able to offer us a plethora of information and resources regarding how to go about them.

The core technologies which power our solution are Java, Blockchain technology and Artificial intelligence. Java provides a smooth means of producing Electronic Patient Record Systems for caregivers to utilize as well as  a means for us to program our application. 

Due to the sensitivity of the information on our application, we decided to implement blockchain technology into our app. Our team prioritizes the safety and security of our users' information which is why we are using blockchain technology. The most significant setback of most healthcare apps is their lack of adequate data protection. This is why we are using blockchain to enhance security, data exchange, interoperability, integrity, and real-time updating for caregivers using the app.

Furthermore, our AI conversational chatbot works using machine learning and Natural Language processing libraries to provide an adequate response to the seniors who are chatting with the model.

In the following Elderly homes:  Family Home for the Elderly – Regina Mundi, Rock garden Homecare Agency, WellCare Home Medicals Limited, and Family Ark Mission International, we plan to serve 200 elders in the next year. When the app has proven useful and efficient we then plan to increase the numbers further and expand the app usage across Nigeria.

Residing in a country like Nigeria, there are limited facilities available for research, innovation and development of new products. This could limit our product's impact in the next year due to the limited scientific provisions available in our country.

Inadequate financing is also another major barrier to the development and launching of our product to senior care homes due to the ongoing economic crisis in Nigeria.

Cultural issues could include the initial resistance by senior care homes to use our application as many might not deem it safe or necessary to use as opposed to the conventional way of caring for senior citizens.

Getting approvals for the launching of a health application in Nigeria could also be a hassle as a result of the process that our app has to go through to ensure that it is safe and secure for use.

Elden Business Model Link

In order to fund our work, our team aims to receive grants from angel investors in our country who are interested in humanitarian acts. Our app would also have some functionalities which would be paid for in order to access certain features. 

Large nursing homes and hospitals would also have access to certain financial plans such as single, family and business features which would all be adequately priced according to the number of users.