Restoring mealtime independence: Robotic feeders empower people

For persons without the use of their hands and arms or limited motor control, the simple joy of eating requires assistance from others. A delicious plate of food at your table might as well be a mile away if no one is there to manually feed it to you. Lacking agency over something so fundamental has meaningful impact on a person’s dignity and quality of life.

But innovations and advances in technology are helping to restore independence to people in this situation. Northwood, the largest not-for-profit continuing care provider in Atlantic Canada, has been working with partners in academia and the commercial sector to bring feeding robots to the table with a joint innovation program called SMARTech.

The program was built as a multidisciplinary collective of healthcare professionals, researchers, data scientists and the Northwood community to deliver practical solutions for long term care, by linking policy, technology and clinical practices together.

As the senior care partner, Northwood worked directly with Dr. Susan Kirkland, the principal investigator, professor and head of the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology at Dalhousie University. She also leads the SMARTech team. Searching for assistive technology solutions that apply to continuing care, robotic feeders were identified early on as potentially game-changing and were introduced in February 2023.

“The benefit of robotic feeders is, once a caregiver has set up the device for use, the resident is in control,” said Gail Giffin, occupational therapist at Northwood Care. “They choose the food they want and the speed at which they eat. There is no need to feel rushed so staff can assist someone else.”

For users, this autonomy while eating provides a dramatic improvement in life quality.

The SMARTech program is funded by Age-Well, the Nova Scotia Innovation Fund and Northwood, which has been investigating and implementing innovations in assisted living. The Northwood Innovation team is an in-house laboratory that explores the ways that technology can be adapted for continuing care needs. Last year it completed a research program that took off the-shelf products and repurposed them to control lights, curtains, and other elements of assisted living facilities.

For Jacklyn, a Northwood resident for eight years, using the robot has made mealtimes altogether more pleasurable. She has enough upper body movement to use her Obi, an American feeder robot, via two control switches under each of her elbows. When Jacklyn shrugs, she can command the Obi to select one of four dishes on her plate, scoop up food and bring it to her mouth.

For persons requiring a different interface, Northwood introduced the fully voice-controlled Neater Eater. For one Northwood resident, his Bluetooth-enabled robot can pair to any phone or tablet, or accept commands natively using a built-in display.

He now enjoys eating in the privacy of his room while watching documentaries on TV. The feeder robot means that he has the power to eat alone whenever he feels like it.

The robots have multiple cutlery attachments, like spoons, forks and sporks, and can be trained and set up to adjust for different individuals and food types, depending on the model. Plates and bowls can be switched out easily, and both are remarkably portable and easy to clean. The downside is cost, with prices ranging between $8,000 and $12,000 per unit.

For a leading large care organization like Northwood this is a manageable expense, but for individuals living on fixed or limited incomes it can be prohibitive.

“We’ve introduced innovations in long-term care for decades, so we know how steep the adoption curve can be,” said Northwood CEO Charbel Daniel. “We expect that as the rollout of new SMARTech devices continues and more data is captured through increased use, they will not only get more capable but more efficient and less costly.

“There are encouraging signs that artificial intelligence is going to make strong contributions in this field.”

Data-driven insights are also subject of this year’s annual Northwood Research Symposium in June, where the keynote presentation will focus on the role of artificial intelligence in continuing care. “Innovation and research are two of our six strategic pillars,” said Charbel.