Building digital replicas of unpaid carers to better meet community needs

Exploring the use of Personal Digital Twin (PDT) technology to provide responsive, personalised digital services to unpaid carers in Gateshead to improve community well being.

This is a AHRC funded Collaborative Doctoral Awards project.  A digital replica of a person (personal digital twin-PDT) holds continuously updated information sensed from multiple sources across the person’s life cycle and data analysis tools to predict current and future conditions, and understand intent, context and sentiment. 

Working with Gateshead Carers Association and Civinet, the PhD will collaboratively (1) co-identify users’ requirements and data requirement, (2) co-design with users on PDT-based intelligent personal assistant tools and (3) co-develop demonstrators for feasibility and acceptability assessment. 

This PhD seeks to establish guidelines and frameworks for how personal digital twins (PDTs) can be implemented as smart digital tools for supporting unpaid carers.

Collaborative partners are: Gateshead Carers Association (Steven Cowen) and David Van der Velde at Civinet.

This project is also currently supported by Innovate UK funded Community Research Networks: Nothing about us, without us: The Unpaid carers Community Research Network.