Since the 1990s the concept of social exclusion has gained significance in the scientific and political debate in Europe as a tool to analyse exclusionary processes in society. Research guided by the ...concept began within the area of unemployment and was only recently transferred to the areas of old age, care dependency and elderly care. The issues of social exclusion in old age, care dependency and the accessibility of formal and informal care resources in European countries with different elderly care approaches are at the focus of this contribution.
As the number of persons with dementia increases and also the demands on care and support at home, additional solutions to support persons with dementia are needed. The COGKNOW project aims to ...develop an integrated, user-driven cognitive prosthetic device to help persons with dementia. The project focuses on support in the areas of memory, social contact, daily living activities and feelings of safety. The design process is user-participatory and consists of iterative cycles at three test sites across Europe. In the first cycle persons with dementia and their carers (n = 17) actively participated in the developmental process. Based on their priorities of needs and solutions, on their disabilities and after discussion between the team, a top four list of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions was made and now serves as the basis for development: in the area of remembering – day and time orientation support, find mobile service and reminding service, in the area of social contact – telephone support by picture dialling, in the area of daily activities – media control support through a music playback and radio function, and finally, in the area of safety – a warning service to indicate when the front door is open and an emergency contact service to enhance feelings of safety. The results of this first project phase show that, in general, the people with mild dementia as well as their carers were able to express and prioritize their (unmet) needs, and the kind of technological assistance they preferred in the selected areas. In next phases it will be tested if the user-participatory design and multidisciplinary approach employed in the COGKNOW project result in a user-friendly, useful device that positively impacts the autonomy and quality of life of persons with dementia and their carers.
Assistive technologies to support persons with dementia and their carers are used increasingly often. However, little is known about the effectiveness of most assistive devices. Much technology is ...put on the market without having been properly tested with potential end-users. To increase the chance that an assistive device is well accepted and useful for the target group, it is important, especially in the case of disabled persons, to involve potential users in the development process and to evaluate the impact of using the device on them before implementing it in the daily care and support. When evaluating the impact, decisions have to be made regarding the selection of measuring instruments. Important considerations in the selection process are the underlying domains to be addressed by the assistive technology, the target group and the availability of standardized instruments with good psychometric properties. In this chapter the COGKNOW project is used as a case example to explain how the impact of cognitive prosthetics on the daily lives of people with dementia and their carers can be measured. In COGKNOW a cognitive prosthetic device is being developed to improve the quality of life and autonomy of persons with dementia and to help them to remember and remind, to have social contact, to perform daily activities and to enhance feelings of safety. For all these areas, potential measuring instruments are described. Besides (standardized) measuring instruments, other data collection methods are used as well, such as semi-structured interviews and observations, diaries and in situ measurement. Within the COGKNOW project a first uncontrolled small-scale impact measurement takes place during the development process of the assistive device. However, it is recommended to perform a larger randomized controlled study as soon as the final product is ready to evaluate the impact of the device on persons with dementia and carers before it is released on the market.
It is estimated by 2050 that one-third of Europe’s population will be over 60. Life expectancy has on average already risen by 2.5 years per decade and the number of old people aged 80+ is expected ...to grow by 180%. Nowadays, there are 5.5 million cases of Alzheimer-afflicted people in Europe and more new cases being added every year. In fact Alzheimer’s disease has been called the “plague of the twenty-first century”. There is currently no cure for this disease; however, prevention and early diagnosis may play a huge role in delaying the onset of the worst effects of this severe disease. Modern technologies could have an important role to satisfy main needs of people with dementia. Nonetheless, despite recent advancements in information and communication technologies and growing sales numbers, industry has been rather reluctant to standardise access technologies and to implement them in a “Design for All approach”. Because of this, in last years, there have been launched in Europe a great number of initiatives, both public and private, which try to improve the situation of those persons who suffer this ailment and that will be detailed in this chapter.
Care in the Community Brown, S; Hine, N; Sixsmith, A ...
Intelligent Spaces
Book Chapter
The UK population is ageing. At the time of the 2001 census there were 8.1 million people aged over 65 living in the UK, 3.1 million of them living alone. By 2011 the number of over 65s is projected ...to reach just under 12 million, and by 2026 over 13 million 1. The extra workload this will place on health and care services will be compounded by political ambitions aimed at meeting the challenges of rising patient expectations 2. In addition to this, the Department of Health aims to promote the independence of older people by providing enhanced services from the National Health Service (NHS) and councils to prevent unnecessary hospital admission 3. As a result we can expect to see a continuing rise in the number of elderly people living at home and requiring good-quality health and social care services.
PDF
