News
Touchscreen computer system helps dementia patients cope with daily
living
27 June 2009
The EU-funded Mpower project has developed a computer system with a
touchscreen to help elderly people remember important information for
daily living and communicate with carers and relatives. It is now being
tested in Norway by Scandinavian research organisation SINTEF Group.
In all developed countries the labour force in the health services is
shrinking, there are more and more old people, and a very high
proportion of them are plagued by deteriorating short and long-term
memory. All this has created a need for computer-based solutions that
will enable elderly people to live safely in their own homes. At the
same time, the technology needed to take special care of them is
expensive and in addition, different standards for home sensors create
problems.
This situation formed the backcloth for the EU’s decision a couple of
years ago to launch a series of projects to make it simpler for industry
to develop new equipment in this field. The Mpower project has the aim
to create a computer platform that could be used for various purposes
and meet a wide range of needs among its target group.
Reminder board
The system developed in Norway is a simple communication system based
on a computer screen, aimed at elderly people who live at home but whose
memory is failing. No keyboard is needed, only a touch on the screen,
which displays the sun and the moon to indicate whether it is day or
night, while a large clock-face shows the time.
“This is also a system for sharing information”, explains project
manager Marius Mikalsen. The families of these patients are often
anxious about how it is going with their parents, and this allows both
them and the home help to enter messages that will be automatically
displayed by the system.
On the screen, for example, the elderly person might find the message
“Remember to drink some water”, or “Take the number 52 bus”. Or current
messages such as “The home help will be coming at nine o’clock this
morning to give you a shower”.
Volunteers testing the Mpower touchscreen computer
system.
Photo: SINTEF Technology and Society.
Another useful feature is that family members can also access the
system to check whether the elderly person’s appointments have been
kept. Has she been to the doctor? Has he remembered to go to the
day-care unit today?
“SINTEF has been project manager here, and it is nice to think that
what we are now testing in Norway was develop by the University of
Cyprus in collaboration with two Spanish companies, and that it runs on
a server in Austria,” says Mikalsen.
Trials
Since last summer, a handful of elderly people have been trialling
the system in Trondheim and Grimstad. Meanwhile, a variant of the system
is being tested in a nursing home near Krakow in Poland. This version
uses sensors and GPS to offer smart solutions both in the house and
outdoors to sound the alarm if and elderly person is moving around in an
unsafe area.
Mpower is coming to an end this month (June). SINTEF will try to
prolong the project in collaboration with Trondheim’s local authorities.
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