Background Populations are aging at an alarming rate in many countries around the world. There has been not only a decrease in the number of births and an increase in the percentage of older people, but also an increase in the number of people living alone. There is growing demand for specialist medical care and daily care with the number of people who can act as caregivers reducing. The use of assistive robots can, at least partially, solve these problems. Objective The purpose of this study was to examine the opinions of future health care professionals (medical and nursing students) regarding the use of assistive robots in the care of older people. Methods The study was conducted with a group of 178 students from Poznan University of Medical Sciences, Poznań, Poland (110 nursing students and 68 medical students), using the Users’ Needs, Requirements, and Abilities Questionnaire. Results The participants of this study believed that assistive robots should, first of all, remind older people to take medication regularly, ensure their safety, monitor their health status and environment, provide cognitive training, and encourage them to maintain physical activity. In the students’ opinion, the robot should not be an older person’s companion but only act as an assistant. Nursing students had significantly higher scores than medical students in several statements concerning everyday use of robots, including reminding about meals (P=.03), monitoring the environment (P=.001), providing advice about a healthy diet (P=.04), monitoring the intake of food and fluids (P=.02), and automatic “switch on” function (P=.02). Nursing students were more focused on the social functions of robots, including encouraging contact with friends (P=.003) and reducing the sense of loneliness and improving mood (P=.008). Medical students were more aware of privacy issues in the statement concerning the possibility of switching off the robot in specific situations (P=.01). Conclusions Our study revealed a generally positive attitude of future doctors and nurses toward assistive robots, which can have an impact on their acceptance by older adults. In the future, medical professionals could help their patients to choose the right robots (and necessary functions) that are best suited to their needs. However, this would require expanding the curriculum to include the issues of gerontechnology.

Despite a high percentage of agreement reached between the staff and user assessments of needs in our study, we were able to identify the areas of discrepancies between these two perceptions of needs. These can be treated as signals pointing to those aspects of care that should be addressed.

The older population is one of the most vulnerable to experience adverse outcomes of COVID-19. Exploring different clinical features that may act as detrimental to this population’s survival is pivotal for recognizing the highest risk individuals for poor outcome. We thus aimed to characterize the clinical differences between 60-day survivors and non-survivors, as well as analyze variables influencing survival in the first older adults hospitalized in Poznan, Poland, with COVID-19. Symptoms, comorbidities, complications, laboratory results, and functional capacity regarding the first 50 older patients (≥60 years) hospitalized due to COVID-19 were retrospectively studied. Functional status before admission (dependent/independent) was determined based on medical history. The 60-day survivors (n = 30/50) and non-survivors (n = 20/50) were compared across clinical parameters. The patients had a mean age of 74.8 ± 9.4 years. Overall, 20/50 patients died during hospitalization, with no further fatal outcomes reported during the 60-day period. The non-survivors were on average older (78.3 ± 9.7 years), more commonly experienced concurrent heart disease (75%), and displayed functional dependence (65%) (p < 0.05). When assessing the variables influencing survival (age, heart disease, and functional dependence), using a multivariate proportional hazards regression, functional dependence (requiring assistance in core activities of daily living) was the main factor affecting 60-day survival (HR, 3.34; 95% CI: 1.29–8.63; p = 0.01). In our study, functional dependence was the most important prognostic factor associated with mortality. Elderly with COVID-19 who required assistance in core activities of daily living prior to hospitalization had a three times increased risk to experience mortality, as compared to those with complete independence. Exploring geriatric approaches, such as assessment of functional capacity, may assist in constructing comprehensive survival prognosis in the elderly COVID-19 population.

(1) Background: while there exist validated measures to assess the needs of older people, there are comparatively few validated tools to assess needs and requirements for the use of robots. Henceforth, the aim of the study is to present and validate such a tool. (2) Methods: The study group included 720 subjects (mean age 52.0 ± 37.0, 541 females) who agreed to fill the Users’ Needs, Requirements, and Abilities Questionnaire (UNRAQ). The validation part of the study included 125 persons. (3) Results: the acceptance of the robot was good in the whole group. The social functions were rated worse than assistive ones. A correlation was found between the scores of social and assistive functions. The respondents claimed that older adults were not prepared to interact with the robot and not very good at handling it, and were sceptical about their willingness to learn to operate the robot. The Cronbach alpha value for the whole questionnaire was 0.95 suggesting excellent internal consistency, and the ICC value of 0.88 represents excellent agreement; (4) Conclusions: We observed a good overall acceptance of the robot across the studied group. There is considerable demand for the use of a social robot in care for older people.

Background Long-term care units’ residents do not constitute a homogeneous population. Providing effective care, tailored to individual needs, is crucial in this context. It can be facilitated by suitable tools and methods, which include needs assessment along with the physical, psychological and social aspects of care. We thus applied a cluster approach to identify their putative groupings to enable the provision of tailored care. Methods The needs of 242 residents of care homes in four Polish cities (Poznan, Wroclaw, Bialystok and Lublin), aged 75–102 years (184 females), with the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) score ≥ 15 points, were assessed with the CANE (Camberwell Assessment of Need for the Elderly) questionnaire. Their independence in activities of daily living was evaluated by the Barthel Index (BI), and symptoms of depression by the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS). The results of MMSE, BI and GDS were selected as variables for K-means cluster analysis. Results Cluster 1 (C1), n = 83, included subjects without dementia according to MMSE (23.7 ± 4.4), with no dependency (BI = 85.8 ± 14.4) and no symptoms of depression (GDS = 3.3 ± 2.0). All subjects of cluster 2 (C2), n = 87, had symptoms of depression (GDS = 8.9 ± 2.1), and their MMSE (21.0 ± 4.0) and BI (79.8 ± 15.1) were lower than those in C1 (p = 0.006 and p = 0.046, respectively). Subjects of cluster 3 (C3), n = 72, had the lowest MMSE (18.3 ± 3.1) and BI (30.6 ± 18,8, p < 0.001 vs. C1 & C2). Their GDS (7.6 ± 2.3) were higher than C1 (p < 0.001) but lower than C2 (p < 0.001). The number of met needs was higher in C2 than in C1 (10.0 ± 3.2 vs 8.2 ± 2.7, p < 0.001), and in C3 (12.1 ± 3.1) than in both C1 and C2 (p < 0.001). The number of unmet needs was higher in C3 than in C1 (1.2 ± 1.5 vs 0.7 ± 1.0, p = 0.015). There were also differences in the patterns of needs between the clusters. Conclusions Clustering seems to be a promising approach for use in long-term care, allowing for more appropriate and optimized care delivery. External validation studies are necessary for generalized recommendations regarding care optimization in various regional perspectives.