Acceptability of Robot Assistant in Management of Type 1 Diabetes in Children

Background: To find out whether children with type 1 diabetes accept a humanoid robot as an assistant in their diabetes management. In particular, the study aims to determine how the patients feel the robot may contribute to their care and how they respond to advice and education provided by the robot. Subjects and Methods: A humanoid robot was used in clinic and its acceptability was tested over 3 months in 37 children (aged 6-16 years) with type 1 diabetes during their clinic visits. Results: The obtained result showed that the overall patients' acceptability is 86.7%. However, the level of acceptability varies depending on the age group; patients aged 6-9 years showed the highest acceptability level of 94.8%, while the older age groups, 10-12 and 13-16 years, showed lower acceptability levels of 85.0% and 83.0%, respectively. There was no difference in the overall acceptability of the robot between the male and female patients (87.0% and 86.5%, respectively). Furthermore, features of the robot that were highly desirable include ability of the robot to give advice on high/low blood glucose (BG) levels (92.0%), how much the patients like the robot (91.4%), and ability of the robot to give advice on BG patterns (90.6%). In contrast, some other features were found least acceptable such as how likely patients want the robot as a companion (81.0%) and calculation of insulin doses with meals (82.53%). Analysis of variance across the responses of different age groups showed that P-value = 0.00003. Conclusion: Use of robots as a new device to support diabetes self-management in children was well accepted by patients.