AV mobility for an ageing population

First published at ITS America - June 6, 2019

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) have the potential to improve the lifestyles of an ageing population, according to speakers in the session AVs, Healthcare and Aging. The Michigan Henry Ford Health System is a case in point, said Timothy Woods, general manager of Autonomous Vehicle Alliance and moderator of the Wednesday session. “The Ford system is moving increasingly toward an outpatient model over the next 10 years where patients will be mobility-dependent to get to their appointments.”

The Ford system means that patients will be spending time outside the healthcare centre, be it in an assisted or independent living facility. But their insurance payments will be dependent upon them meeting their medical appointments. This is where reliable AV transportation will be crucial to the outpatient system, said Woods.

“Too often a patient’s caregiver is also the driver of the vehicle taking the patient to the appointment,” said Suzette Malek, manager of global societal trends research with General Motors. That’s not the caregiver’s main job. In an AV there is a “social moment” between the caregiver and the patient because they can converse.

There still remain obstacles for patients and elderly people before they can trust an AV, noted Michelle Hartmann, market intelligence manager with Magna International, the global Canadian automotive supplier and mobility technology company. “If people that they [older people] trust are using and talking about the usefulness of AVs, then trust about AVs will eventually build up,” she said.

Also, the use of AVs can replace the anxiety that many independently living older people now have about some aspects of driving which stops them from getting behind the wheel, said Hartmann. These include a fear of night driving and of bad-weather driving.