“I just have diabetes”: children’s need for diabetes self-management support and how a social robot can accommodate their needs

Abstract

Children with type 1 diabetes need to self-manage their illness to minimize its impact on their long-term health. However, because children are still developing cognitively and emotionally, self-management is challenging. The European FP7 project, ALIZ-E, looks at how social robots can support children aged 8–12 years with their diabetes self-management. To acquire user requirements for such a robot, we studied how diabetes self-management is organized for children and how they experience their illness and its management regarding their quality of life