Dementia and assistive design and technologies
The Assistive Technologies task force meeting was held at Wolfson College Oxford on 21 June 2010 under the auspices of the Alzheimer’s Society and NIHR DeNDRoN Assistive Technology (AT) task force.
The aims of the meeting were:
To enhance the prospects of successful research grant applications in the field of dementia-related AT by:
- Promoting exchange of ideas and experiences about research design, execution and topics
- Stimulating collaboration between researchers who may know little of each other’s work
- Potential research applicants who are interested in sharing experiences and ideas
- Clinicians and others (with or without experience of AT) who want to recruit dementia patients / carers into AT studies
- Carers and patients who would like to help researchers to improve their research ideas
Presentations were given in the morning and workshops held in the afternoon.
Excellent feedback was given; the speed networking being a big success.
Quotes about what the attendees found most stimulating, useful and interesting are below:
- “Speaking to people who I would never have met and being able to put the carers perspective”
- “Good range of stimulating topics and contact opportunities”
“It’s a change to explore topics from a wide range of angles and to discover unexpected communities of interest” - “There's a genuine desire amongst both the research and the product design fraternities to get their act together to benefit people with dementia and their families”
- “Yes, I did enjoy the day and was sorry I had to miss the workshops in the afternoon as they all sounded very interesting. It would be good to have more of these kinds of meetings on different topics - is that the intention?”
Next Steps
Expressions of interest for writing groups will be sought from attendees and researchers interested in developing new and existing communities of interest to take forward innovative, multi centre research projects in this area. Details about how to set up a writing group can be found here
If you are interested in any of the task force themes please email your area of interest and expertise to denise.wilson@dendron.org.uk