Using Social Robots in Children With Rare Diseases and Their Parents: A Feasibility Study

Children with rare disease and their caregivers are distressed and stressed to deal with the disease and daily life, and their parent-child relationships are also challenging. Although social robots have been used to improve patients' and caregivers' well-being in clinical settings, there still needs to be family-centered, child-friendly, convenient, and feasible interventions for patients with rare diseases and their families. This study aims to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of a social robot intervention for providing family-based care for rare disease families and explore the effectiveness of the social robot intervention in improving the parent-child relationships and alleviating stress and anxiety for rare disease patients and their parents. A single-group, pretest-posttest feasibility study will be conducted in a medical center in Northern Taiwan. Of 21 dyads of 8- to 19-year-old children with rare diseases and their parents will be enrolled. The dyads will interact with the social robot PARO in each 30-minute course every two weeks for four courses. The retention rate will be calculated after the study, and the Friedman's test and Wilcoxon signed rank test will analyze the changes in the parent-child relationship, the anxiety, the perceived stress scales, and the heart rate variability. The content analysis will be used to analyze the interview data to delve into the child-parent-robot interaction and the effectiveness of the social robot intervention in the patients and the parents. This study is expected to provide a feasible and effective intervention to improve the psychological and social health of children with rare diseases and their caregivers and provide a reference for future randomized controlled trials of social robots in pediatric care.