Innovate Dementia Living Environment Living Labs

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1 Innovate Dementia Living Environment Living Labs A holistic approach to the environment should always be considered in these Living Labs. Environments are more than physical spaces, maximising independence, autonomy and well being comes from ensuring a person s psychological as well as physical needs are met. Design should be influenced by promoting independence and normalising living, rather than control. Flexible care environments are important to enable people living with dementia to age in place and prevent unnecessary admissions to care homes or hospitals. Future environment models need to utilise the principles of dementia friendly environments coupled with home care methods. These principles should cross boundaries and be applied to wherever a person is living 1. Living Lab subject Responsible Innovate Dementia Project Partner + My House of Memories App + Liverpool + Memory Enabling App + Liverpool + GoLive Phone + Eindhoven + PhysiCAL + Eindhoven + Qwiek up + Eindhoven + Pressure Jacket & Blanket + Eindhoven + Bed Leave System + Eindhoven + STAR- Skills Training Re-skilling for Carers of + Eindhoven People Living with Dementia + Psycho Education + Flanders My House of Memories My House of Memories, a digital reminiscence and communication app for people living with dementia and their caregivers has been developed to support people living with dementia s communication interactions, engagement, cognitive stimulation and involvement in meaningful activity. The app also provides a detailed communication toolkit guidance for caregivers to enable the health and social care sector. To ensure the app was dementia-friendly, a user-centred design process was undertaken through a tested model of co-creation within the UK Innovate Dementia Living Lab. The co-creation process brought people living with dementia and their carers together with the development team throughout the whole design, creation and testing process. The process of co-creation within the Living Lab focussed upon: Increasing meaningful communication and interaction by creating a conversational tool that promotes and stimulates conversations through a creative and intuitive digital method and that can be easily used by people with dementia and caregivers in their own home, in care home settings and across generations. Reminiscence resource that utilised the Liverpool Museum collection experience as a memory resource. The historical national and local collections would enable people to browse through objects from their past, brought 1 Woods, L., Smith, G., Pendleton, J. & Parker, P., 2013, Innovate Dementia Base Line Report, Liverpool John Moores University

2 to life through accessible multimedia (sound, film) prompting reminiscence and communication about everyday objects and life. User lead design process to develop a digital resource that has been fully ço-created by people living with dementia and their caregivers to ensure the end product is simple, functional and easy to use. Memory Enabling App Developing a Memory Enabling App is part of the Innovate Dementia project in Liverpool. People living with dementia and their carers specify what they want an app to do. They are at the centre of the co-creation and coproduction process. In this project, the Innovate Dementia team works with Citrus Suite, a local business partner. The initial idea of a memory enabling app came from an exercise that was carried out within the framework of a Regional Stakeholder Platform session about A day in the life of a person experiencing dementia. Four local business pitched their ideas to work with the Innovate Dementia team to develop the app. The criteria included that these business would: actively engage with the co-creation process; show commitment to work in a Living Lab approach and show continuity, openness, empowerment of people living dementia and spontaneity. The Innovate Dementia team shows that assumptions about older people, particularly people with dementia using technology, can t be made. The group have been very clear about what an app should look like. After seven meetings, a prototype has been demonstrated. The prototype will be adapted. The next step is for people to take home tablets (or screens as they are being called in the group as tablets are medicine!) and test them. GoLivePhone The GoLivephone is a smartphone for people that want to live independently at home for as long and actively as possible that can also be used by people living with dementia and their caregivers. The smartphone was evaluated in an Eindhoven Innovate Dementia Living Lab session in cooperation with the company Gociety, and it s owner Frank Verbeek. The GoLivephone is designed to be easy to use. It is a smartphone that allows you, within your own capabilities, to get the most out of your life and keep matters as much in your own hands as possible. On the phone you can set what menu options are available through large buttons with high contrast. The GoLivephone has several function: the usual functions of a smart phone, but also some specific features to support elderly. Unique for the GoLivephone is that the caregivers are always just a press of a button away, via a help button function. These caregivers can, with your permission, monitor and support you remotely in a number of ways. They will know where you are, how active you are and, if needed, can respond directly. Additionally the phone is equipped with so-called Intelligent Fall detection: when a person falls, a signal including the location of this person is sent to the contact person or a professional alarm centre. A simple push on the everything OK - button on the phone will notice your family no action is needed.

3 Furthermore a special guide me home application allows for very simple navigation. So if you want to go somewhere, or if you are lost, you can get a very accesible, step by step routing functionality, promoting indepedence. The GoLivephone was tested in the Eindhoven Innovate Dementia Living Lab by 11 couples. The results are gathered and accumulated in two studies (one focussing on data and one on design). Based on these results a new iteration of the GoLivephone will be made, showing how the Living Lab supports innovation and design in industry. PhysiCal The PhysiCal is an activity calendar, developed by the Technical University Eindhoven. The calendar looks like a memory board where the person living with dementia and his family carer can indicate activities during the day with small magnetic cards. The board reads the activities, and a sound signal indicates when it is time to perform an indicated activity. Four couples have tested the PysiCal in the Eindhoven Innovate Dementia Living Lab; they appreciated this sound as its provides more rest because now they had access to an active calendar. However, some iterations are needed to get to a final design, they found the size of the calendar too large, they would have liked a clock on the device as well. This shows how the Living Lab inspires design. Qwiek.up The Qwiek.up creates dynamic environments for people who are confined to bed. How does it work? By room filling projections combined with sound the product provides a complete experience, all packed in an easy to use product. The Qwiek.up combines personal experiences with a mobile product to make it usable for an entire care facility (or at home). These features reduce a lot of time which is wasted transferring people, but more importantly, clients can enjoy their snoezel experience in their own (known) environment. The Qwiek.up comes with a variation of experience modules pre-selected for this target group, but also allows for a slideshow of personal pictures. The product was tested in the Eindhoven Innovate Dementia Living Lab at a care facility and we are looking for more testing locations! Pressure Jacket & Blanket This Pressure Jacket and Blanket are solutions to stimulate the senses and to help in calming down and to create in this way an improved physical wellbeing. The jacket and blanket are filled with balls or with air that provide pressure on the body. In this way the feeling of being touched (superficial sensibility) as well as the experience of muscles and joints (deep sensibility) are stimulated. This pressure provides people with more confidence.

4 The jacket and blanket are discussed in a Living Lab focus group and will be tested in the coming period. Bed Leave & Wandering System This Bed Leave & Wandering System, developed by Cordian. It is a detection solution that alerts nursing staff when a person leaves the bed. This sensor solution is discretely placed under the mattress and is wirelessly coupled to a Nurse Assist Device for processing and alerting nursing staff. Four bed systems were placed in January 2013 in the clinical setting of people living with dementia at the GGzE. The evaluation will focus on its contribution to the reduction of falls of people living with dementia; secondly input will be provided for further development to make this system suitable for the home context. STAR: Skills Training and Re-skilling for Carers of People with Dementia The EU-STAR project will create an educational platform with associated methodology and content for improving the skills of carers for People with De The project focuses on creating a methodology and content for improving the skills of persons caring of people with dementia by creating a technology multiplatform with educational data regarding dementia and on how to best care for elderly. It is a known phenomenon that more aged people are slowly being diagnosed with this condition, and since the families might not want to send their loved ones away in a specialised home, they are engaging carers that either live-in completely, or else they get regular professional visits that are supplemented also by putting technology solutions in the person's home to monitor and help them when they are alone. In both cases, such a job needs proper preparation, skilling and also reskilling since new advancements might make present knowledge obsolete. In the Eindhoven Living Lab, the STAR method will be tested until December 2014 by both informal as professional care givers to evaluate this method. BPost Thomas More set up a first study about Innovative solutions in the living environment from social and spatial point of view. Therefore a partnership with Bpost (Belgian Post service) was made. The main goal in this project was to facilitate more autonomy and comfortable home living for older and less mobile people, with a special focus on persons with dementia. The approach was using the strengths from each other: from the caregivers: care and from Bpost: logistic. We want to introduce a new concept shop & deliver also in healthcare. Bpost delivers any goods consolidated after the consumer makes an appointment with Bpost. This study shows as strengths: 1. Quality of the service; 2. It is an answer on a need: frequent users = participants with extra needs; 3. Positive impact on feelings of autonomy; 4. Added value for informal caregivers.

5 Cado Cado (Collective Autonomous Day Care) is a new care concept that is tested. CADO sustains home care by supporting the informal caregiver. It is a solution for informal caregivers of people with dementia, because this group needs more assistance than other informal caregivers. In this concept a formal caregiver takes care of four to five patients and provides customized activities for them. Due to the CADO initiative, the informal caregiver regains time for himself. During this time he can do again some activities so that he can reactivate his social live. This gives him new energy, so that he can longer maintain his care. Psycho Education The Flemish Expertise Centre on Dementia and the Flemish Alzheimers Liga launched a new initiative for psycho education aimed at family caregivers of persons with dementia to support ageing-in-place while maintaining quality of life. Different social service agencies such as day care centres of local health insurance agencies will be able to offer this psycho-education through a series of 11 sessions. Themes include: the lived-experience of persons living with dementia, dealing with care, with (challenging) behaviour, with budgets, security (including car driving), how to deal with and communicate with family and social environment. The supporting material for this initiative consists of two folders: one manual for the coach and one for the participant. In addition to this, all coaches receive a training on how to use the material as well as a digital copy of all power point and video material. The initiative has been tested with one group of participants. Based on the feedback coming from this evaluation, the material will be edited and improved. A first training of coaches will be organized in autumn From summer 2015 onwards, participants will also have access to an online e-learning environment.