EU funds €6.4m dementia project

The European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme has given City University London more than €6.4m to develop new software to help the carers of people with dementia to work in more collaborative ways.

A team at City’s Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice is working with the Registered Nursing Home Association and the EU’s MIRROR project to develop tools that carers can use in their day-to-day work, to develop new ideas, to put them into practice and to record if they are successful.

The four year project will see the research team work closely with two care homes in England, to evaluate their needs and design a set of smart applications and hardware.

Possible ideas include using digital pens to capture a resident’s details and share the data with a colleague who could devise treatment based on prior, similar experience.

Professor Neil Maiden, who will lead the research, said: “Caring for people with dementia is incredibly difficult, because each case is unique and can change quickly.

“We hope to make it easier for carers to deal with the problems they encounter, by helping them learn from previous situations, and apply their own and their colleagues’ knowledge in new ways."

He added: “Many organisations encourage their workforce to be more creative, but forget to put resources in place to cultivate innovation. Our aim is to develop practical tools that carers can use in their day-to-day work, to develop fresh ideas, put them into practice and record if they were successful.”

City University London is one of 15 organisations working on the MIRROR project across Europe. Four other pilots are being carried out in emergency services in Italy, stroke care and business intelligence in Germany and project management in the Netherlands.