Skip to Content

Introduction

Last modified by Marlein Vogels on 2022/04/02 14:41

Decreased food consumption is commonly seen in people with dementia, leading to malnutrition, dehydration, decreased immune function, weight loss and less muscle strenght (Edahiro et al., 2012; "Poor appetite and dementia", 2022). Malnutrition is not only unhealthy for a person with dementia on the short term, but it has even been reported that malnutrition may influence the disease progression of people with Alzheimer's disease (Kigozi et al., 2021).
One of the major causes of this decreased food consumption is that people with dementia, especially when suffering from Alzheimer's disease, tend to forget to eat (Al-Anssari et al., 2021).
Assisting people with dementia and encouraging people with dementia to eat has been reported as a major burden for their caregivers (Edahiro et al., 2012). During mealtimes, people with dementia might become angry or agitated or even aggressive, increasing the burden on the caregivers even more ("Poor appetite and dementia", 2022).
The aim of this project is to develop a prototyped robot that prevents people with dementia from developing a too low food and drink intake and decrease the burden of their caregivers.

  1. Edahiro, A., Hirano, H., Yamada, R., Chiba, Y., Watanabe, Y., Tonogi, M., & Yamane, G. (2012). Factors affecting independence in eating among elderly with Alzheimer's disease. Geriatrics &Amp; Gerontology International, 12(3), 481-490. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1447-0594.2011.00799.x
  2. Poor appetite and dementia. Alzheimer's Society. (2022). Retrieved 2 April 2022, from https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/get-support/daily-living/poor-appetite-dementia#:~:text=A%20person%20with%20dementia%20may%20lose%20interest%20in%20food.,loss%20and%20less%20muscle%20strength.
  3. Al-Anssari, H., Al-Anssari, H., Abdel-Qader, I., Abdel-Qader, I., Mickus, M., & Mickus, M. (2021). Food Intake Vision-Based Recognition System via Histogram of Oriented Gradients and Support Vector Machine for Persons With Alzheimer's Disease. International Journal Of Healthcare Information Systems And Informatics, 16(4), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.4018/ijhisi.295817
  4. Kigozi, E., Egwela, C., Kamoga, L., Nalugo Mbalinda, S., & Kaddumukasa, M. (2021). Nutrition Challenges of Patients with Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias: A Qualitative Study from the Perspective of Caretakers in a Mental National Referral Hospital. Neuropsychiatric Disease And Treatment, Volume 17, 2473-2480. https://doi.org/10.2147/ndt.s325463