European research helps people with dementia to navigate their day

As approximately 1.9 million elderly people in Europe experience a form of dementia. A pan-European research project is seeking to help them 'navigate their day' and improve their quality of life.

The recently launched CogKnow project, funded under the EU's Sixth Framework Programme (FP6), aims to help people to remember, maintain social contact, perform daily life activities and enhance their feelings of safety.

Dr Nugent from the University of Ulster in the UK told CORDIS News: 'We are delighted to be involved in this project which is working towards the development of tangible home-based solutions to support persons with memory loss problems.

"The project is unique in the way that both patients and carers will contribute to the design of the discrete user-friendly technology," he added.

As the technical coordinator of the project, the role of the university will be to research and prototype assistive technologies to support people with memory loss by providing easily recognisable prompts to help them navigate through their day.

Following the results of a first study where people with dementia described their unmet needs, the project partners have now begun work on a portable cognitive prosthetic device which will help with information, communication, safety and reminders.

For example, the first function, currently in development, is called 'picture dialling', whereby the user need only press a button with a picture on the device for a phone connection to be made to a carer or a member of the family. Another function being considered uses radio frequency Identification (RFID) technology to track the movements of patients and send out an alarm if they forget an appointment or need to take medicine.

Dr Nugent said that although the project is still in its early stages, this first study had provided invaluable input and guidance on which to base initial technical developments.

"Now we plan to evaluate the deployment of our first technical solutions during the summer of 2007 in Northern Ireland, Sweden and the Netherlands, where we will assess rudimentary issues such as usefulness and user friendliness of the technology," he said

In its first year the project will stick to developing this low-level technology with an eye on progressing to ambient intelligence and its enhanced possibilities for contextual awareness and automated support functionalities.

Dr Nugent said: "Ambient intelligence is one of our rapidly growing research areas and will be the next step in technologies for assisted living of elderly people."

Dementia is a progressive, disabling, chronic disease affecting 5% of all persons above 65, and over 40% of people over 90 years old. The term dementia refers to a combination of symptoms involving impairments of memory, speech, thought, perception and reasoning.

For further information, please visit:
http://www.cogknow.eu/index.htm

Copyright ©European Communities, 2007
Neither the Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, nor any person acting on its behalf, is responsible for the use, which might be made of the attached information. The attached information is drawn from the Community R&D Information Service (CORDIS). The CORDIS services are carried on the CORDIS Host in Luxembourg - http://cordis.europa.eu. Access to CORDIS is currently available free-of-charge.

Most Popular Now

Unlocking the 10 Year Health Plan

The government's plan for the NHS is a huge document. Jane Stephenson, chief executive of SPARK TSL, argues the key to unlocking its digital ambitions is to consider what it...

Alcidion Grows Top Talent in the UK, wit…

Alcidion has today announced the addition of three new appointments to their UK-based team, with one internal promotion and two external recruits. Dr Paul Deffley has been announced as the...

AI can Find Cancer Pathologists Miss

Men assessed as healthy after a pathologist analyses their tissue sample may still have an early form of prostate cancer. Using AI, researchers at Uppsala University have been able to...

AI, Full Automation could Expand Artific…

Automated insulin delivery (AID) systems such as the UVA Health-developed artificial pancreas could help more type 1 diabetes patients if the devices become fully automated, according to a new review...

How AI could Speed the Development of RN…

Using artificial intelligence (AI), MIT researchers have come up with a new way to design nanoparticles that can more efficiently deliver RNA vaccines and other types of RNA therapies. After training...

MIT Researchers Use Generative AI to Des…

With help from artificial intelligence, MIT researchers have designed novel antibiotics that can combat two hard-to-treat infections: drug-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae and multi-drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Using generative AI algorithms, the research...

AI Hybrid Strategy Improves Mammogram In…

A hybrid reading strategy for screening mammography, developed by Dutch researchers and deployed retrospectively to more than 40,000 exams, reduced radiologist workload by 38% without changing recall or cancer detection...

New Training Year Starts at Siemens Heal…

In September, 197 school graduates will start their vocational training or dual studies in Germany at Siemens Healthineers. 117 apprentices and 80 dual students will begin their careers at Siemens...

Penn Developed AI Tools and Datasets Hel…

Doctors treating kidney disease have long depended on trial-and-error to find the best therapies for individual patients. Now, new artificial intelligence (AI) tools developed by researchers in the Perelman School...

Are You Eligible for a Clinical Trial? C…

A new study in the academic journal Machine Learning: Health discovers that ChatGPT can accelerate patient screening for clinical trials, showing promise in reducing delays and improving trial success rates. Researchers...

New AI Tool Addresses Accuracy and Fairn…

A team of researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has developed a new method to identify and reduce biases in datasets used to train machine-learning algorithms...

Global Study Reveals How Patients View M…

How physicians feel about artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine has been studied many times. But what do patients think? A team led by researchers at the Technical University of Munich...