Robots for the elderly

Robots reduce the Danish Kingdom's expenses for the maintenance of nursing homes

Mikhail Vannakh, ComputerraAll Russians suddenly found out about Denmark.

And not because they went to see The Little Mermaid, read Andersen's fairy tales or watched the wonderful film "Andersen. Life without love." No, thanks to the efforts of the press, everyone suddenly found out that giraffes and even gray wolves are being killed in Copenhagen… But the fact that a full-scale program of assistance to elderly citizens is being implemented in Denmark at public expense, including their maintenance in nursing homes, somehow does not come to mind. And no one will mention that robots are involved in order to reduce the costs of this program without reducing the quality…

So, let's start with the problem statement. Denmark (as you will see in the diagram below) is a country with a steadily increasing life expectancy. As of 2009 – 78.3 years for the general population, men – 75.96 years, women live longer – 80.78 years… Over 65 years of age – a sixth of the Danes. Well, the demographic structure is exactly what it should be in the developed countries of the post-industrial world. A small number of children. Traditional "big families" have remained in the distant past…

The average life expectancy in Denmark is steadily increasing.

Well, age is such a thing that as life experience accumulates, diseases accumulate. Which need to be treated. The further, the more often… And you have to pay for everything. Until the early seventies, there was a health insurance system in Denmark. Then it is canceled, and the treasury of the Danish Kingdom takes over the expenses for the treatment of subjects (this is not a republic, where the people, who are the bearers of sovereignty, are joyfully moving towards universal payment for medical services through the system of health insurance funds). And it spends 9.8% of GDP on it.

So hospitals in Denmark belong to the state and municipalities. And the better they work, the more elderly people there are. And their ability to serve themselves is limited. Year after year, they need more and more outside help. And "big families" – where there are many generations under one roof, and each new generation is more numerous – have long been gone. Children and grandchildren live separately. And – busy with work. So at some point, elderly Danes end up in nursing homes, which are maintained by municipalities with financial support from the state…

It is a social center in the center of Copenhagen.

But this support, for all its solidity, is not unlimited. Right-wing parties constantly strive to limit it: indeed, the tithe spent on healthcare creates a very heavy burden even on a completely prosperous economy. But the reduction of standards of medical care, including standards for the maintenance of elderly people in nursing homes (nursing homes are used by the author for simplicity, the descendants of the Vikings themselves avoid such words) is very effectively opposed by both the left-wing parties and the Danish People's Church…

So there is a paradox ... it is necessary to improve – or at least not to reduce – the quality of care for elderly compatriots in nursing homes. But at the same time, it is necessary to reduce – or at least not increase – budget expenditures. Well, in some countries, such a paradox – within the framework of democratic reforms and the introduction of universal values – was solved by switching to insurance medicine with a constant reduction in state medicine, free of charge… But the Danes live in a kingdom, not in a democracy!

And so the leaders of the social sphere of the Danish Kingdom went the other way. It is the one that accompanies the entire development of human civilization. And it is called increasing labor productivity through the introduction of technology achievements. In this case, we are talking about increasing the productivity of social workers through the introduction of information technology products, and more specifically, robotics.

Here we are not talking about artificial intelligences that can diagnose diseases better than a protein doctor ("Artificial intelligence will help oncologists"). And even about the iron Florence Nantingale, artificial nurses with silicon brains, there is no question either… So far, the level of massively accessible and economically recoupable technologies has only reached the replacement of the most unskilled part of the labor of the staff of nursing homes, who in Soviet factories were called "junior attendants", and in hospitals and kindergartens of the same time – nurses and nurses…

And robots are the simplest. Those that are not called robots today, but are listed in stores as just vacuum cleaners. And it was these machines that the leaders of the Danish social sphere used very simply and very effectively. According to the Danish portal DaneAge ("The Voice of Elders"), 84% of managers of nursing homes either already use cleaning robots intensively, or will start doing so in the near future. Modest and uninteresting? At first glance, yes…

The robot vacuum cleaner also takes care of the grandfather on the "walker".

But as a result, the results were strikingly successful (by the standards of those who are engaged in everyday practical business, and not building financial pyramids). During the six years during which a massive program for the introduction of technological advances in the social sphere has been carried out, the treasury of the Danish Kingdom has reduced, according to the Danish Statistical Office, the costs of helping a compatriot over 65 by 10,851 kronor (by €1,454, in other words), which is about a fifth of the funds allocated for this.

And as part of the technological re-equipment of the social sphere, the program of which was announced in the Danish Kingdom in September last year, it is planned to reduce costs by 12 billion kronor (€1.6 billion) per year by 2020. And the Danes perceive this technological rearmament in the highest degree optimistically. The Guardian (Denmark's robotic helpers transform care for older people) quotes a social worker from Copenhagen, Anja Vestergaard.

The more routine, but absolutely necessary and guaranteed permanent cleaning work robots take on, the more time the staff will be able to spend on taking care of their patients. Even if these jobs are quite simple and robots do not have fantastic superpowers. But they have the main thing: they are useful! They are cost-effective, even in such an area as social.

Now Denmark is implementing a large-scale program to transfer to robots some of the functions that were previously performed by social workers who come to the apartments of elderly subjects of the kingdom. Indeed, given the cost of labor in Denmark and the small number of the younger generation, it makes direct sense to provide a robot vacuum cleaner to a pensioner, freeing up human labor for truly human affairs.…

By the way, managers of social institutions in Denmark also do not neglect "small mechanization". For example, in the Rosenborg Centre, where Anya Westergaard works, coffee makers are installed in the kitchens, allowing pensioners with tremor of the hands to pour themselves coffee using cups convenient for a person on crutches or "walkers" to bring them to their room. Such simple engineering solutions also make people's lives better, as does the elementary mechanization of baths, which allows old people to sit down and leave them on their own…

And at the end of the conversation about socially oriented "smart" cars (for some reason, the humane and useful use of such a machine causes much less interest than another American drone) It should be noted that they already influence the political processes in the Danish Kingdom. For example, the leader of the Red-Green Coalition, Johann Schmidt-Nielsen, sought the adoption of a standard of social care for the elderly, which would provide for assistance in taking a bath at least twice a week. Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt rejected this demand.

Relations with the centrist coalition were more important to him, and he began a program of reducing social spending. But robotization – even the smallest – allows you to reduce costs without condemning the elderly to torment. Without remembering Shakespeare's "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark" ... And we note that a very simple device can bring real benefits to people.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru19.02.2014