A feasibility study of co-developing an AI-based television-enabled application (TEA) to address social isolation and alleviating loneliness in older people.

Loneliness can affect anyone, although older people are most at risk from chronic loneliness due to life events (e.g., retirement and bereavement). Research shows that loneliness can have serious consequences for the health of older people and that it can lead to increased use of healthcare services (such as GP services and A&E). Older people who live alone face an increased risk of being admitted to hospital as an inpatient.

There are traditional befriending services; but so far, there has been very little research to see if it can make a difference. One idea is to implement an innovative form of befriending to enable those who cannot access the traditional befriending services e.g., in hard to reach areas in Essex and those who cannot get safely discharged from hospital coupled with frailty and lack of social connections, in Cornwall.

This project aims at co-designing an AI-based television-enabled application (TEA) that can adapt a home television set, that is universally useful for enabling older people to connect with befriending services. TEA will enable older people in Essex and Cornwell, to increase the cohesion of social connection and address loneliness by facilitating engagement. The development of TEA will be guided by older people through participatory design and can also be easily remembered by the end-users by its name- "TEA".

The conversant use of technology, i.e., television can reach widespread, even hard-to-reach older population to befrienders, overcoming technology anxiety, resistance to change, and even geographical boundaries to create communities of shared interest (such a reading groups).

Our research team, with extensive experience in co-designing products with older people, have successfully worked on a large European project on age and technology. We will be co-designing this television adaption tool (TEA), with a panel of older people, some befriending volunteers, academic researchers and small businesses. This application will be also accessible through smartphones. We envisage that older people in Essex and Cornwall will benefit from the TV-enabled befriending service; however, the real impact will only be known after we have analysed the data we collect.

Significantly, the project will provide the first systematic insight into the value of the different models of befriending services for addressing loneliness and isolation in older people. The findings will therefore be useful for government, local authorities and others looking to address loneliness and isolation in older people through befriending and can be replicated nationwide as well as globally.