Another milestone in the DISTINCT (Dementia: Intersectorial Strategy for Training and Innovation Network for Current Technology) project, which is conducted by Prof. Karin Wolf-Ostermann (IPP, Dept.7), has been reached and the second update of the Best Practice Guidance could be published. The INDUCT-Best Practice Guidance Human Interaction with technology in dementia (https://www.dementiainduct.eu/guidance/) contains a comprehensive set of recommendations on improvement of technology for people with dementia in three areas, everyday life, meaningful activities and healthcare, and provides evidence to show how technology can improve the lives of people with dementia. This Best Practice Guidance originally results from literature studies and field research conducted within INDUCT (2016-2020), a Marie Sklodowska Curie funded Innovative Training Network (ITN) of researchers of 8 Universities in 6 European countries. The web-based version of the Best Practice Guidance was launched in autumn 2019 and a year later a first update was published.
In the update of the Best Practice Guidance of December 2021 the first recommendations of a second Marie Sklodowska Curie funded ITN on Technology and dementia, called DISTINCT (2019-2023) are included: https://www.dementiadistinct.com/. The main aim of DISTINCT is to provide the evidence to show how technology can improve the social health of people living with dementia by enabling them to 1) fulfil their potential on a societal level, 2) manage their own life and 3) participate in social and meaningful activities.
The recommendations for improving the usability, effectiveness and implementation of technology in dementia which are presented in this Best Practice Guidance are meant to be helpful for different target groups: people with dementia, their formal and informal carers, health care and welfare providers, policymakers, designers and researchers. For this reason representatives of these target groups were consulted and involved throughout the INDUCT and DISTINCT projects. One of the outstanding Early Stage Researchers and Marie Curie Fellow in DISTINCT, Viktoria Hoel (IPP, Dept.7) contributed a lot in this ongoing project and was for example interviewed about her work in Alzheimer Europe Magazine, where she gave information regarding the motivation behind dementia research, hopes for the future and how COVID-19 is impacting her research. Have a look at the website and easily navigate to the recommendations relevant to you!
Contact:
Prof. Dr. Karin Wolf-Ostermann
University of Bremen
Faculty 11 Human and Health Sciences
Institute of Public Health und Nursing Research
Department 7
Mail: wolf-ostermann@uni-bremen.de
