Smart
BRING THE PHARMACIST HOME Every day, a group of Chicago older adults return to their independent-living apartments and says hello to a friendly, helpful and infinitely knowledgeable voice: Alexa, Amazon's AI-powered digital assistant. And now, a pair of UIC Pharmacy researchers hopes to turn that technology into a medication resource for older adults. Thanks to a project at the Admiral at the Lake Continuing Care Retirement Community, Amazon’s Alexa-enabled Echo Dot smart speakers now reside in 100 of the facility’s independent-living apartments. Drs. Jennie Jarrett, UIC assistant professor of pharmacy, and Robert DiDomenico (UIC 1996), UIC associate professor of pharmacy practice, lead the university’s portion of the project. They will work to bring medication education into older adults’ homes through a podcast on the Dots, a companion live-presentation series, and potentially other applications, like medication reminders. Through this partnership, DiDomenico said, the school hopes to show that technology can give older adults a sense of independence. We want to “empower the residents to … have some measure of control over their health and their medications, which I think can sometimes be fleeting
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SUMMER 2019
