Japanese Caregiving Robots: Meet Paro, Riba and Hal

Link to Japanese Caregiving Robots Video

Are caregiving robots a good thing? 

There is no doubt that the last robot in this video, HAL, serves a very useful purpose. Not related to the HAL in the movie 2001 (as far as I know) this HAL is an "exoskeleton" designed to support and expand the physical capabilities of people who are otherwise disabled.

But what about Paro, wouldn't it be better to have a real pet? And Riba can pick you up but Riba is not capable of providing the warmth and assurance of human touch. 

However, there is a growing shortage of caregivers so maybe the Japanese are on to something.

What do you think? Post you comments here or tweet to hashtag #carerobots

Using Unfrazzle: A Sleep Diary for Aunt Millie

Part One

My Aunt Millie lives in Boulder, Colorado, a long distance from my home in Berkeley, California. She's 86, very sweet, and I'm attached to her in a special way. She provided me refuge during some turbulent times in my confusing teenage years. 

Independent and in good health, Aunt Millie lives by herself in a little house on Mapleton Avenue not fair from the Pearl Street Mall. She doesn't drive, most everything she needs is within walking distance. 

I did not used to be too concerned about Aunt Millie because my Uncle Bully, her brother, lived in Denver and my parents lived not far away in Western Nebraska. They were always in touch with her, but they've all passed away and now I am her closest relative.

If something goes wrong and Aunt Millie really needs someone to be with her, that would be me.

Recently, I began to worry about Aunt Millie when she told me she hasn't been getting much sleep, some nights none at all. So I called her primary doctor, Dr. Anna Fraiza, and we discussed the possibility of giving her a prescription to the sleep medication Lunesta. 

Lunesta might help Aunt Millie, but it can be addictive and there are numerous side effects including the possibility of short-term memory loss. 

An Alternative Approach

Before going this route, Dr. Anna and I agreed we should first see if we can discover the underlying cause of Aunt Millie's insomnia, perhaps we can correct it in a more natural way and avoid using a sleep medication. 

To get started, Dr. Anna suggests we ask Aunt Millie to keep a "sleep diary."  

Right away I thought of Unfrazzle, I wondered if could I use it to create a useful sleep diary for Aunt Millie that both Dr. Fraiza and I could monitor. 

Aunt Millie doesn't have a smartphone, but last Christmas I bought her an iPad which for her is even better. The screen is larger, easier for her to read and the keys are larger too. She loves it, uses it frequently. 

While I find Unfrazzle user friendly, it is unrealistic to think Aunt Millie can download the app, create an account, and set up her own sleep diary.

I do want Aunt Millie to eventually manage her own account. However, to make sure she understands how her Unfrazzle sleep diary works, I decide to not only set it up for her, but to actually call her every morning for a few days and make the entries myself. 

Once Aunt Millie is familiar with the sleep diary, I will "walk her through" the procedure for downloading the Unfrazzle app onto her iPad and the logging into her account. 

At least, that's my plan. 


Aunt Millie's Unfrazzle Account

Setting up an account for someone else on Unfrazzle is simple. After logging into your account, you first navigate to the "Family" section by tapping on the Family icon which is 1-of-the-4 choices on the bottom navigation bar of each Unfrazzle screen. (below) 

Once in the Family section, you tap the "+" sign. 

You are now at the "Add to Family" screen. Obviously, Aunt Millie isn't already an Unfrazzle member, so I tap on "New Member" (below).

When you add a New Member to your Unfrazzle Family you can give them different levels of access to your account. There is no need for Aunt Millie to have access to any information on my own account, so I leave the check mark beside the None designation. 

As you can see, the next step (below) is to fill in a sign-up form. I enter Aunt Millie's formal name "Mildred," which I also use as her Username, and enter a password.

Press Done and Violå!, Aunt Millie has her account.

Aunt Millie's Sleep Diary

To create the sleep diary I log out of my own account and log into Aunt Millie's new account. As you can see, when you first log into an Unfrazzle account, the "Journal" screen pops up and is already populated with three sample journals: Coffee, Miscellaneous Notes, and Mood Journal. 

The word Journal in "Unfrazzle Speak" can be any activity or task you want it to be. This may seem confusing at first, but in reality it makes perfect sense. Because Unfrazzle keeps a history of all your entries, the dates, listings and notes you make related to any specific activity become a "journal" of that activity. 

The sample journals above are only there to show you what journals look like and demonstrate what they do. You can use them if you want, or you can simply ignore them or delete them.

I choose to delete these sample journals because I think they might distract Aunt Millie. To do this I simply tap on the journal name to get to its edit screen, scroll to the bottom of the page and clicked on "Delete Journal." (below)

Having deleted the three sample journals, I click on the "+" symbol on the top of Aunt Millie's Journal screen to add a new journal, which will be Aunt Millie's Sleep Diary. (below)

An "Add Journal" form appears (below). I enter the name "My Sleep Diary" on the Title line and leave the Description line blank. 

Tapping on the word Schedule (above) I am given the choices: None, Once, Daily, Weekly and Monthly. 

I choose Daily and set the time at 9 a.m. (above)

I leave "Ends" set at "Ongoing." The alternative setting for "Ends" is a specific date. If Dr. Anna had only wanted Aunt Millie to keep her Sleep Diary for 6 weeks, Unfrazzle could accommodate this.

After clicking on "Done" Unfrazzle takes me back to the "Add Journal" screen (below) where I turn the "Reminder" ON. Next, I click on "Add Attribute."

The first entry (Attribute) I want Aunt Millie to make into her Sleep Journal every morning at 9 a.m. is "How Well?" did she sleep. Note that Attributes can be "amounts, lists, scales, or text fields."

For this first Attribute, I decide to use a "Scale." I want to know on a scale of 0-to-10 how well did she sleep the previous night, with "0" meaning "restless" or not at all, and 10 meaning "like a baby." (below)

I press Done and move on to the second Attribute. I want Aunt Millie to tell me how many hours she slept. For this I chose the "Amount" style Attribute, fill in the Name: "How Many Hours?," and fill in the Unit: "Hours." I leave Amount blank. (No need for "Default Amount" here.)

I press Done (above) and move on to the third question, which will be "Times I Woke Up?" As with the previous Attribute, I use the "Amount" attribute, filling in the Name and leave both the Unit and Amount lines blank.

The Final question for Aunt Millie calls for her to briefly describe any dreams she might remember having. For this I use a "Text" attribute (below):

Pressing Done I have now created Aunt Millie's Sleep Journal. Notice on the Edit screen below that Unfrazzle automatically adds an additional item for entering notes. With Unfrazzle you can always add notes to Journal entries.

What's Next

My plan now is to call Aunt Millie at 9 a.m. for a few days, ask her these four questions and enter the answers into her Sleep Diary. I'm going to also take advantage of these conversations to find out if there some things I can suggest that will help her sleep better. 

For instance, does Aunt Millie have a TV in her bedroom? If so, I'll ask her to move it out of the bedroom or at least agree not to watch it in bed at night. I'll suggest she do some reading instead. I might even suggest she try some deep breathing exercises or meditation before going to sleep. (See: 21 Tips for Getting a Good Night's Sleep)

If and when she adopts some of my suggestions I'll be able to tell if they make a difference. 

Once Aunt Millie is totally familiar with this routine, I am going to "walk her through" the steps of uploading the Unfrazzle app from the iTunes store into her iPad and logging into her account.

Before this happens, I will have added Dr. Anna to Aunt Millie's Unfrazzle Family network so she can also monitor her progress or lack thereof.

Check back in a few day for my next installment: Is Aunt Millie Get More Z's? 

More tips on using Unfrazzle, including videos, can be found on the User Guide pages of our website. 

Want to Know More about Unfrazzle?

21 Tips for Getting a Good Night's Sleep

Fifty percent of the adults living in the industrialized world are chronically sleep deprived. over 30 percent of adult drivers polled admit to falling asleep at the wheel at least once. Roughly 24,000 people die each year in North America and Europe in accidents caused by sleepy drivers. 

Lack of sleep contributes to heart disease and weight gain and is even associated with dementia. Sleeping pills might provide a short-term solution, but they do not provide the kind of sleep you need to operate at your optimum level. To help you get more sleep, we’ve devised the following tips.

                                                                                Illustration by Timmy Kucynda

• 1. Get rid of the TV in your bedroom.
• 2. Turn your phone off. 
• 3. Keep your bedroom cool.
• 4. Close the curtains, the darker your bedroom the better. 
• 5. Keep doors shut. 
• 6. Avoid clutter, it wears on your mind and can contribute to stress. 
• 7. Try a "white noise" machine
• 8. Use quality bedding. 
• 9. Have a firm mattress.  
• 10. Use a neck pillow. 
• 11. Don’t smoke for two hours before going to bed.
• 12. Don’t drink for four hours before going to bed.
• 13. Skip the caffeine, after lunch, not dinner. 
• 14. Bathe or shower before bed.
• 15. Try meditation.
• 16. Avoid stress.
• 17. Have a rule: No arguments before bed. 
• 18. Read before sleeping.
• 19. Do some deep breathing. 
• 20. Try the natural hormone melatonin.
• 21. Keep pets out of the bedroom unless you have a cozy dog. 

This chart was originally published in Eldr magazine. For your very own downloadable copy, click here. 

New Post: Using Unfrazzle to Create a Sleep Diary

Want to know more about Unfrazzle?

CAREGIVER RELIEF ON THE WAY: UNFRAZZLE SEEKS TO DE-STRESS THE LIVES OF 65 MILLION AMERICAN CAREGIVERS

"Caregiving is a tremendous responsibility that not only impacts the lives involved, but the health of the caregiver as well. Unfrazzle is taking on this challenge. It is a simple app that could make a profound difference."

Matthew Holt, Co-Chairman

Health 2.0 Conference

In the United States alone, there are an estimated 65 million family caregivers, who on average spend 20 hours per week on their caregiving responsibilities. As the aging of the U.S. population continues to accelerate, this number will rapidly grow.

An estimated 20 million of these caregivers are in the "high burden" category. They spend an average 50 hours per week on their responsibilities, taking care of seriously impaired family members. These are a diverse group - caring for older people with Alzheimer's, children with Autism, friends or family with cancer, etc.

NEW POST: How to Create a Sleep Diary with Unfrazzle

Family caregivers are frequently overwhelmed by the never-ending torrent of their caregiving tasks. Organizing tasks and ensuring they are completed is enormously stressful. Sharing tasks with co-caregivers is oftecomplicated.

Many caregivers report feeling alone and unsupported - so much so, their own physical health and mental well-being suffers.

Determined to "uncomplicate and de-stress the lives of family caregivers," Rajiv Mehta, a veteran Silicon Valley technology developer, has created Unfrazzle, a smartphone app to help caregivers remember, keep track of, and share their caregiving tasks.

Kathy Kelly, Executive Director of the National Center on Caregiving and the Family Caregiver Alliance, who has been following the development of Unfrazzle, says:

"The caregiving community has a tremendous need for a smartphone app like Unfrazzle. I believe it has the potential to unburden caregivers from much of the stress of keeping track of all the tasks they need to do every single day. It will also make it possible for them to easily share some of these tasks with others."

Unique in the caregiving market, Unfrazzle focuses on easing the mental burden of everyday caregiving. It provides unprecedented flexibility to help users remember and track their day-to-day caregiving tasks; and connectivity, with rich privacy controls, with co-caregivers to keep everyone in-sync.

Unfrazzle users can invite family members and others to join their Unfrazzle network and they can assign different tasks to their co-caregivers.

Link to YouTube Unfrazzle Explained if needed

"Unfrazzle takes a big mental load off your mind as you're not stressed about whether you're going to forget to do something," say Mehta, "and you'll always know what's going on with your family members." 

A more indepth look at how Unfrazzle works can be found on this blog:

Chaos to Serenity: How Unfrazzle Makes it Easier for You to Take Care of Yourself & Your Family

The iPhone version of Unfrazzle is currently undergoing a rigorous beta-test and will be released in the Apple iTunes App store in May. An Android version will soon follow.

About the Unfrazzle team

Rajiv Mehta, founder and CEO, is a former NASA scientist with degrees from Princeton, Stanford and Columbia with experience leading innovation for Apple, Adobe, Interval Research and Symbol. A board member of Family Caregiver Alliance, and a leader in the Quantified Self movement, he created the apps Zume Life and Tonic, ground-breaking products that led to Unfrazzle.

Rajiv leads all Unfrazzle business, business developments and product development efforts, and participates extensively in various public forums and institutions.

David Bunnell, Media Chief, founder of PC Magazine, PC World, Macworld, BioWorld and numerous other media properties, is responsible for Unfrazzle's marketing, public relations and content development. He is the winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Computer Press Association and The New York Times Fellowship award.

Hugh Dubberly, award-winning designer and educator, whose firm Dubberly Design Office advises some of the world's leading technology, media and health companies. Hugh, who has worked closely with Rajiv for many years, is collaborating on the design and development of Unfrazzle.

Ashvin Radiya, PhD, is at the forefront of multi-platform, hybrid app development. His firm, AvantSoft, develops software and provides development training on cutting-edge technologies for leading corporations around the globe. His team is providing software development services for Unfrazzle.

About The Unfrazzle Company

The Unfrazzle Company is an online media and smartphone app development company. We address the growing needs of tens of millions of family caregivers. Our task management and coordination tools and educational support are designed to make life easier for them--easier to provide quality care for their loved ones, easier coordination with co-caregivers, and most importantly, easier to maintain a reasonable level of sanity and personal wellness in their own lives.

Unfrazzle has been presented at the San Francisco Health 2.0 Conference (October, 2012) and in the AARP EngAGE Pavillion at mHealth Summit (December, 2012).

####

Unfrazzle is developed by Bhageera Inc, led by Rajiv Mehta. Bhageera Inc provides consulting services to help companies evaluate and commercialize radical innovation, with a focus on consumer health innovations.

Photos and screenshots available by request

Links:

Unfrazzle Website

Unfrazzle Blog

Unfrazzle User Guide

Unfrazzle Facebook

Unfrazzle Twitter

AvantSoft

Bhageera Inc

Dubberly Design Office

Family Caregiver Alliance

Health 2.0

                             

Background material:

Chaos to Serenity: How Unfrazzle Makes it Easier for You to Take Care of Yourself & Your Family (Unfrazzle blog)

The Future of Healthcare, Rajiv Mehta (slides)

Outfitting Families for Caregiving Jobs (slides) 

In-depth biographies: Rajiv Mehta and David Bunnell

End of Life: Is Starvation Better than a Feeding Tube?

Roger Ebert was not secretive about his feeding tube, which kept him alive the last few years of his life and allowed him to keep on writing movie reviews.  "Six times a day," he wrote in a blog post "a can of liquid food is dripped into me from a plastic bag on a pole. It takes maybe 15 minutes. I continue to write, read, or watch TV."

In Roger's case and in that of thousands of people with cancer, Lou Gehrig's disease, or recovering from stokes, a small plastic tube is all that stands between them and starvation.

The modern feeding tube was developed by Drs. Jeffery Ponsky and Michael Gauderer in 1979 when in an experiment they created a small tunnel above a baby's belly button, leading directly to the stomach. Using an endoscope, they were able to accurately place the feeding tube.

For people like Roger Ebert who can make their own decisions, feeding tubes are a great invention. 

But what about someone with advanced Alzheimer's disease who survives to the point of being unable to swallow, even with assistance, or who has lost all interest in eating and drinking, and is in the final phases of the disease process?

Is it ethically or medically necessary to use a feeding tube?

While 20 plus studies have concluded people with dementia don't benefit from feeding tubes, they are still routinely used in many nursing homes and in many hospitals.  Often times they are even used when though patients can still benefit from assisted oral feeding which at least provides human touch and contact. 

It's just more expedient for short-staffed nursing home to stick a tube into someone's stomach. 

The Alzheimer's Association has taken an official position that it is "ethically permissible" to withhold both nutrition and hydration artificially administered by vein or gastic tube when a person with Alzheimer's is at the end stages of the disease and can no longer take food or water by mouth. 

Tube feeding can cause diarrhea and related bed sores and it can result in the use of physical restraints to prevent individuals from pulling the tubes out of their abdomens. 

People with Alzheimer's need to be informed about the risks and benefits of tube feeding while they are still competent, and have the opportunity to sign an advance directive specifying what their wishes for future care are. 

In the absence of such a directive, the Association asserts, a surrogate (trusted family member) may make decisions consistent with the dying person's expressed wishes or best interests and consistent with state laws. 

Not eating at the end of life is a normal part of they dying process and once you stop eating your body triggers a biochemical process called ketosis. Ketosis blunts hunger and releases natural morphine-like agents.

If you don't want to be artificially fed with a tube at the end of your life, you need to make this part of your medical directive and let your wishes be known to close friends and family. 

For myself, I want to be able to simply refuse to eat food or drink water if I feel I'd rather die than suffer. 

This should be my right. A simple right to die by starvation. 

Recommend reading:

Roger Ebert: The Way to a Man's Heart is Through his Stomach

San Jose Mercury: The Cost of Dying Series

Alzheimer's Association: Assisted Oral Feeding and Tube Feeding

Long Island Newsday: Consider options before allowing a feeding tube

Want to know more about Unfrazzle? 

A Day in the Life of a Caregiver

Source: tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com via Unfrazzle on Pinterest

Check out our collection of Charts and Graphics for Caregivers on Pinterest (Click Here)

Want to know more about Unfrazzle? 

Chaos to Serenity: How Unfrazzle Makes it Easier for You to Take Care of Yourself & Your Family

Virtually everyone is a caregiver. 

If you live alone, have no family, no friends and no pets, you still have to take care of yourself. You are a caregiver for yourself.

If you live alone and have a pet, you are a caregiver for yourself and your pet.

Most people have more complicated lives, of course. We take care of ourselves, our pets, our children, and often our family and sometimes our friends.

NEW POST: Using Unfrazzle to Create a Sleep Diary for Aunt Millie

If you are taking care of someone who is disabled, ill or just elderly, things can get really complicated. The number and variety of tasks, the things to remember and worry about can be overwhelming. 

In 2012, over 15 million Americans helped care for family or friends who have Alzheimer's, and this is just one example. A study from the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions found that there are over 3 million caregivers for special needs children and nearly 42 million for people over age 18. 

Here at Unfrazzle, there's not much we can do about these numbers. But we can still do something very important. 

By making it easier for caregivers to remember and keep track of all their caregiving tasks, to stay in synch with and share some of these tasks with others, we can help caregivers find more space for joy, health and life. 

To illustrate how this works, we created the following video example of how a family might use the Unfrazzle smartphone app:



Link to video if not displaying

In this video, Unfrazzle connects Sue with her family (husband Bill, her mother Mary, son Joey), her dog Gizmo, and her fitness coach, Yoko.

Sue, Bill, Mary and Yoko use Unfrazzle. Joey and Gizmo do not, but tasks related to them are shared by Sue and Bill.

Sue uses "journals" to keep track of her daily exercise routine, the foods she eats, her weight and other tasks. She also maintains a "headache journal" and is correlating the frequency and severity of her headaches with how much coffee she drinks.

This is useful stuff, but for Sue, what makes Unfrazzle really powerful is that it lets her look at the regiments of other family members. (Unfrazzle users can determine which ones they want to share and with whom.)

At a glance, Sue can check up on her Mom. She sees that Bill gave Mary her morning meds (he's assigned to this task), she slept 7 hours, and the quality of her sleep was 4 on a 1-to-5 scale. She can also see that Mary feels like it is going to be a great day even though she has some minor back pain, probably from gardening. 

Sue even see a note her Mom entered, "Great day for gardening." This makes her smile because she knows Mary loves gardening and isn't going to let a little back pain stop her. 

Thanks to Unfrazzle, without calling Bill and her Mom, Sue knows what is happening. She doesn't have to fret.

This is only one example of how Unfrazzle brings "serenity to chaos." 

Unfrazzle gives users complete control of how tasks are described using optional scales, lists, amounts, frequency and text fields. It also gives users full control over how much access family members and other users in their Unfrazzle network have to these task descriptions. 

Our goal is to provide a simple service that makes a profound difference in the lives of caregivers, no matter how overwhelming and seemingly unmanageable their situations are. 

Right now, Unfrazzle is in beta. We'll be reporting soon on the experiences of our beta testers and within a few weeks, the app will be released first for iPhone users and then for Android users. 

Want to know more? Here's some useful links: 

          Unfrazzle website
          Unfrazzle User Guide
          Unfrazzle Explained YouTube Video
          Unfrazzle on Facebook
          Unfrazzle on Twitter
       
       

What to Do when the Caregiver Falls Ill?

Kristine Rudolph

by Kristine Rudolph

It’s been Mom’s fear for awhile now. As she is Dad’s 24/7 caregiver, she has a nagging fear … “What will I do with him if I get sick?”

She’s had colds from time to time, but in the nearly five years since his stroke, she hasn’t faced a really scary situation where she just couldn’t provide him the care that he needed.

Until last week.

I don’t know if the ungodly miserable norovirus has taken root in your neck of the woods, but down in the Southeast, it is wreaking havoc. My family had it last week, my in-laws also had it last week, and my mom was exposed when she was visiting family and friends in Tennessee.

Granted, it’s not the surgery, emergency, or serious illness that she fears would take her completely out of commission for months but it did land her in bed for the better part of the week.

Blessedly, Dad is presently in a skilled nursing facility, recovering from some surgery he had recently. So she wasn’t responsible for his day-to-day care. She couldn’t go see him, which made her profoundly sad, and she lives in fear that she has exposed him, but thankfully, she wasn’t at home fighting the virus while simultaneously having to provide round-the-clock care for my father.

The whole situation – plus the fact that I was laid up with the same virus last week and still responsible for the care and comfort of three kids five and under – has me thinking a lot about support systems. Mom’s got some amazing friends where she lives, and they visited Dad on the days she was too sick to go.

But still, the weight of caring for someone who is incapacitated (or young) exponentially increases when you are under the weather yourself. And even with the best of support networks, when you’ve got a raging stomach bug, the last thing you want is to expose someone else to that misery.

If you are the primary caregiver to children, spouse, parents or grandparents, how do you cope when you can’t be 100%? What tips would you offer others similarly situated? 

About Kristine Rudolph

Kristine Rudolph is an AFAA certified group fitness instructor who specializes in prenatal and postpartum fitness. She publishes the blog, "Exploring Wellness. Together" where the article above originally appeared. You might think her blog would be all about exercise, but it also reflects her many other interests, including parenting, cooking and caregiving. I've been subscribing to it for a couple months now and I find her posts entertaining and educational--well worth the time to consistently read. I subscribe to it, and recommend it to others.  --David Bunnell

Want to know more about Unfrazzle?