Impact Objectives• Develop a system which provides the elderly population with increased
autonomy and independence, and assists in the daily aspects of their lives• Provide highly personalised communications and content for the web, forexample movies and music – for individual elderly people• Ultimately improve the quality of life for the world’s expanding ageing population

Person-centredcare with ICT
Professor Masahide Nakamura discusses his work to provide person-centred care for elderly people athome, using affordable assistive technologies and systems
Could you begin
by explaining yourbackground andhow you became
interested in system
informatics?
When I was seven years old, my father
brought a PC home. I was very excited to playwith it. As this was 40 years ago, nothing
was as convenient as today. Using computer
magazines, I started programming andlearned how software worked on the PC. I’ve
been interested in computer science since
this time. I obtained my PhD from Osaka
University in Japan and after graduating I
worked for Ottawa University in Canada,
doing a postdoc for a year, then returned
to Osaka University. I later moved to the
Nara Institute of Science and Technology(NAIST). Ten years ago, I joined Japan’s Kobe
University, which is where I am currently
based. Moving around various institutes, I
was attracted by many aspects of software.
System informatics studies, the integrationof various systems using information

A PCC (person-centred care) experiment at a day care centre

technology, allows me to take full advantageof my background in software.

What are the main benefits the ‘Virtual Care
Giver: Virtual Agent for Personalized Home
Elderly Care’ system offers to users?

How did your current project come about?
In October 2013, Seiki Tokunaga entered mylab as my first PhD student. At the time, wewere studying home network systems (known
today as smart homes). As Seiki began his
PhD course, I wanted to embark on a more
useful and challenging research theme.
Initially, my idea was to make full use of thehome network system for the elderly, sincea rapidly ageing society is a global social
problem. However, there were many gaps
between the homes of elderly people and theresearch lab. Our research used a technologydriven approach, but as we met actual elderly
people, caregivers, therapists and doctors, wefound this approach to be meaningless forpractical situations. This was when we foundthe notion of person-centred care (PCC),
introduced by Tom Kitwood.
As we studied PCC, we found that the
principle itself is quite important, but
providing PCC continuously requires a hugehuman effort of professional caregivers and it
is almost impossible to do PCC at individual
houses. So, we established an ambitious goal
to make PCC feasible at home by making ICT
and the Internet of Things (IoT) affordable
for home users. The project is now at the
five-year mark and a lot of great ideas havebeen implemented as actual systems. Seiki
obtained a PhD in 2016, and is currently
working for Riken AIP, a top national research
institute in Japan.

The main benefit is providing highly
personalised communications and content
for the web for individual elderly people.
The content includes pictures, music
and movies. The elderly can enjoy thecontents even if they cannot use a PC or
smartphone. Looking ahead, we want to
add functionalities to evaluate the effectsof the care the agent provides.
How adaptive is the system to individual
users? Will it evolve automatically, or would
there be a need for regular maintenance bya third party?
The system will evolve automatically.
Through conversations and communications,activity labels are attached to stream data.
This means the system gradually recognises
what is going on and what needs to be
done. Since the system contains physicaldevices including sensors, there would besome necessary regular maintenance. Mostof the maintenance tasks can be automated,
but we will look into this when the system
is released for market.
Could you summarise your progress so far?
The project is currently going well. Students
are also very interested in developing andevaluating the system. This means everybody
recognises the project is meaningful
and wants to make it a success.
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Improving the quality of life
At Japan’s Kobe University, researchers are working to improve the quality of life of the elderly by developing
systems that can provide person-centred care at home, giving them greater independence

The rapidly ageing population is a known
phenomenon that is observed across theglobe. However, being elderly should notmean a compromised quality of life, and withthe development of technology comes theability to provide the elderly with autonomy
and help assist them in their lives. One teamof researchers is interested in the super smart
society (Society 5.0) – the next-generationsociety, where heterogeneous systems areinterconnected over cyber and physical spaces toprovide advanced services for individual citizens– and is hoping to exploit its full potential.
Professor Masahide Nakamura of Kobe
University, Japan, is heading up this work.

Autonomous SensorBox

32 www.impact.pub

It is a branch of gerontechnology, in which
technology is directed by opportunities
for the elderly, but focuses specifically on
person-centred care (PCC), as Nakamura
explains: ‘We are studying how the systemautonomously considers the individuallydifferent situations and backgrounds of elderly
people, in order to improve the quality of life
at home.’ The goal of Nakamura’s work is toprovide PCC for the elderly at home, making
use of assistive technologies and systems
that are affordable. ‘The issue of our ageing
society is spreading across the world. Japan is
the most “advanced” country in that context
and a lot of elderly people are living alone,’he explains. ‘The number of one-personhouseholds is dramatically increasing andwill represent 37.4 per cent in 2030 (including
both young singles and the elderly). So, it is anatural direction to introduce technologies tohelp take care of ourselves.’
SERVICE-ORIENTATED ARCHITECTURE
Nakamura’s work surrounds serviceorientated architecture (SOA), an architecture
paradigm in software engineering whereby eachfeature of a system is considered to be a service
and the services are exposed to a network.

His group in the Nakamura lab – CS27b – isexploring how SOA can be applied in practicefrom a software engineering perspective.
For example, the researchers are working
to develop a smart home system called
CS27HNS, which is powered by an SOA andenables household appliances and sensors
to be operated via the web. Furthermore,they are working on the idea of integrating
multiple smart homes in a city together
with city infrastructure in order to solve
problems in the city; a so-called smart city.
The researchers are also looking into smart
healthcare, drawing on ICT as one of themost promising technologies for safe andhigh-quality living. One of the services theresearchers have developed is called ‘Virtual
Care Giver: Virtual Agent for PersonalizedHome Elderly Care’, which does what it sayson the tin. According to Nakamura, the realvalue comes from the integration of different
components: ‘The virtual agent technology
itself is not very new or surprising. However,integrating it with various components toprovide value-added services is important.
Traditionally, researchers have concentrated
on polishing one thing for better quality.
However, I think there are many good

things available. So, it is more important tointegrate them to create useful services forpeople and society.’
The original version of the Virtual Care Giver
was developed by Seiki Tokunaga, a former
doctoral course student, who designed andbuilt the basic components of the system.
The system is in constant development,
integrating smarter features and services.
Other key members of the team are: Seiji
Sakakibara, a former Master’s student who
implemented the Autonomous SensorBox –an IoT device that captures environment
data and uploads the data to private cloudservers in the team’s lab; and Kazunari
Tamamizu, a former Master’s student who
developed the AI system that understands theactivities of the elderly at home. Nakamura
is also working with Kiyoshi Yasuda, a speechtherapist at Chiba Rosai Hospital, whoprovides the team with professional advice
and practical ideas and cooperates on theclinical evaluation of the system, and Masae
Yokota, a social worker in Yoriai-Dokoro Ren,
who assisted the researchers with conducting
an experimental evaluation of their system.
PERSONALISED CARE
The Vitual Care Giver uses emerging facerecognition and image processing technology
to generate a 3D model of a face from a given
picture. Services such as text-to-speech,
speech-to-text, dialogue and facial expression
are made available to the user. It uses a
profile of each elderly person to provide
personalised care that is customised to theindividual. In addition to being used for careof the elderly in their homes, it can also be
used for psychological counselling.
Although other integrated virtual agent
interfaces are in existence, these all work
based on predefined scripts and scenarios.

What makes Nakamura’s system particularly
innovative is the fact it strives to adapt todifferent situations and backgrounds, delivering
personalised services. ‘The adaptation
is autonomous. The system knows thesituation from sensor readings, as well as theuser’s preference/profile obtained throughconversations. Of course, the system learns
from the data to see what care is appropriate forthat elderly person in that situation,’ he explains.
A BUDDY FOR EVERYBODYThe key challenge the team faces concerns
integrating the different heterogeneouscomponents, as Nakamura explains: ‘For theautonomous SensorBox, we implemented
software modules to automatically monitor
the status of sensors and the network, and torestart the system when any fault occurs,’ heexplains. ‘This kind of IoT system consists ofa number of components, so the reliability ofthe system is determined by the multiplicationof the components. The real challenge is not indevelopment, but in operation. Thus, we foundit important to decipher how to minimise
human effort for operation and maintenance.’
Looking ahead, Nakamura hopes thesystem his team has developed will proveindispensable to the elderly and will be an
integral part of life: ‘The ultimate challenge
is to realise a society where the virtual agent
will truly be a “buddy” to every elderly person.
Currently, the virtual agent behaves based on
externally observable data, which is quite anengineering-based approach,’ he explains. ‘Toachieve the goal, the agent has to understandthe internal status of every elderly person,
including emotions and pains. This is quitea challenging issue.’ Although challenging,
the team appears to be on target to achieve
its goal, and with some of the brightest
minds working towards a common aim,
the researchers seem set to succeed. l

Project Insights
FUNDINGJSPS KAKENHI (Grant-in-Aid for Scientific
Research) (B), No. 16H02908 • Kawanishi
Memorial ShinMaywa Education
Foundation • Tateishi Science andTechnology Foundation (C) (No.2177004).
COLLABORATORS
Seiki Tokunaga – RIKEN AIP, Japan • Seiji
Sakakibara – Kobe University, Japan •Kazunari Tamamizu – Kobe University,
Japan • Kiyoshi Yasuda – Chiba Rosai
Hospital, Japan • Masae Yokota – Yoriai
Dokoro Ren, Japan • Kenji Hatano –Doshisha University, Japan • Jun Miyazaki– Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan
CONTACT
Masahide Nakamura
Principal Investigator
T: +81 788036398
E: masa-n@cs.kobe-u.ac.jp
W: https://cs27.org/
PROJECT COORDINATOR BIO
Masahide Nakamura received his BE,
ME and PhD degrees in Information andComputer Sciences from Osaka University,
Japan, in 1994, 1996, 1999, respectively.
From 1999 to 2000, he was a post-doctoral
fellow in SITE at the University of Ottawa,
Canada. He joined Cybermedia Centerat Osaka University from 2000-02. From
2002-07, he worked for the Graduate
School of Information Science at Nara
Institute of Science and Technology, Japan.
He is currently an Associate Professor in
the Graduate School of System Informatics
at Kobe University, Japan. His researchinterests include service/cloud computing,smart home, smart city and gerontechnology.

Architecture of a Person-Centred Care Support System

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