From chatting in Singlish to catching emotional cues: How AI lends seniors a listening ear 24/7
Published on
17 Mar 2025
Published by
The Straits Times
The automated voice assistant, developed through the IMDA Open Innovation Platform, mimics care staff’s empathetic tone in conversations and flags signs of distress for prompt intervention
Every day, dozens of elderly Singaporeans living alone find comfort in conversing with care staff from Active Ageing Centres (AACs) over the phone.
Now, a new automated solution by the non-profit Lions Befrienders Service Association will gradually provide the 26,000 seniors under its care with more consistent and timely support. This will help ensure they always have a reliable point of contact for their needs.
Explains AAC care staff Ambun Atnan: “We typically reach out to seniors daily to check in on their health and well-being, and inform them of new activities they can join.”
She can now devote more attention to elderly residents who need additional care and support since the solution saves her nearly three hours of daily calls.
Powered by generative artificial intelligence (gen AI), the system automates outreach, check-in and follow-up calls. It also deploys a natural, human-like AI voice assistant that converses with elderly residents just as staff would.
The voice assistant can understand and respond in Singlish, or Singaporean English, as it is trained to recognise the vernacular’s unique accent, colloquial terms and sentence structures.
This allows elderly residents to communicate with it as they naturally would with family or neighbours, making conversations feel familiar and comfortable.
Lions Befrienders’ lead innovation catalyst Muhammad Hazwan Ismail points out that personal connection remains essential for combating isolation and loneliness among the elderly. Despite being automated, he explains, the voice assistant is specifically designed to maintain a warm, personal touch.
“Seniors will not feel like our staff has forgotten about them,” he adds. “They can also receive better care as, with the technology, we’ve improved our workflow, allowing us to have more meaningful interactions with those who need additional support.”
Building an AI companion for seniors
The breakthrough came through a partnership between Lions Befrienders and US-based technology provider Seasalt.ai, facilitated by the Infocomm Media Development Authority’s (IMDA) Open Innovation Platform.
It took the duo nine months to develop a voice AI system that could handle thousands of personalised conversations with seniors daily.
Seasalt.ai customised its existing AI-driven customer support technology, SeaChat, to understand how Singaporean seniors speak, learning common phrases used during check-ins and continuously improving with each conversation.
The system can even detect emotions and then adapt its conversation style in real time. For instance, when it senses stress or discomfort in a senior’s voice, it adjusts its tone to offer reassurance and support, creating a more empathetic interaction.
The next phase of the project will introduce multilingual support, such that it can handle conversations in mixed languages.
Explains its chief executive officer Yao Xuchen: “One of the primary challenges was dealing with Singaporean English and the multiple dialects spoken by the elderly population.
“We are fine-tuning our speech engines, which involves training the AI on a diverse set of speech samples to ensure it can recognise a wide range of dialects and accents.”
Safety guardrails have already been added to protect seniors from receiving incorrect information. For example, if a senior asks about medication dosage, the AI voice assistant will not offer specific medical advice but instead direct them to consult their doctor.
The solution has since helped the AACs be more responsive. Expanding the system’s capabilities, Seasalt.ai set up a 24-hour hotline staffed by the AI voice assistant, so seniors can seek social support even beyond regular working hours.
Some vulnerable seniors, such as those with chronic conditions or mobility challenges, use remote monitoring tablets in their homes. They press a button on it once or twice daily to confirm they are well.
The new system now automatically calls seniors who miss consecutive check-ins and alerts the AAC immediately if there is no response.
Lions Befrienders has installed the system at seven AACs it manages and will further roll it out to the remaining three. To ensure the system works reliably at scale, Seasalt.ai also teamed up with US-based cloud communications company Twilio to maintain clear, uninterrupted connections across thousands of daily calls.
Mr Hazwan adds: “We will also work with Seasalt.ai to further fine-tune the solutions to address the different needs of each centre.”
Learn more about IMDA’s Open Innovation Platform on their website and sign up for their mailing list to stay updated on upcoming OIP Challenge calls.
Source: The Straits Times © SPH Media Limited. Reproduced with permission.
Photo: The Straits Times
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