Social Assistive Robots for Elderly Care: The New Efficiency in the Context of Triple Bottom Line and Digitization

Abstract

Currently more economically developed countries (MEDCs) are facing a painful shortage of caregivers, while the need for their abilities is growing. The caregivers' capacity bottleneck is aggravated by the counter-directional development in terms of economic efficiency Input (= availability of caregivers' capacity) and Output (= fulfillment of qualitative and quantitative care requirements). It is necessary to introduce a "New Efficiency" concept for social service providers in the eldercare sector. In order to warrant feasibility of process output without cost reduction of the elder care process, this paper focuses on the optimization of process organization and, specifically, analyzes the impact of digitization on services in long-term nursing homes. In this context "New Efficiency" is an enabling paradigm to ensure the attainment of qualitative and quantitative care requirements by optimization of process input. The usefulness of the ,,New Efficiency" for long-term caring processes is discussed in the context of nutritional care and logistic processes. Taking into consideration that Triple Bottom Line efficiency of service production is a key factor, the research question of how to combine digitized enabling resources (i.e. SAR (Social Assistive Robots), AAL (Ambient Assisted Living), AI (Artificial Intelligence) and IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) with human resources becomes a vital strategic matter. Therefore, the paper analyzes the organizational issue to partially substitute human workflows through robotic workflows, its productivity and profitability effects as well as the digitization impact on Key Performance Indicators (KPI) of elderly care. Digitization in the context of this paper is the process to convert signals, messages, images from analog to digital format so that computer / robot can receive, store, transform and transmit these data in bit format.