MedGUIDE recruitment for the pilot

[By Helianthe Kort November 23 2018]

For the MedGUIDE project we visited one Alzheimer Café in the Netherlands, several times. These cafés are usually organized once every month for persons with Alzheimer and other dementia disorders, for their family and professional cares. Every province in the Netherlands has one or more Alzheimer Café which offers a variety of themes related to the diagnosis or the suspicion of having a disorder of the dementia syndrome. The café that we visited is run by a professional who is facilitated by her care organization and she is supported by volunteers who act as hostess and tech support. In general up to 30 people may visit the café, also people just interested in certain topics. The cafés are open for the public.

In October 2018 we had the chance to demonstrate the MedGUIDE platform. After a short introduction on ageing-in-place with dementia, the design of the dwelling and use of assistive technologies, we started with the demonstration. Unfortunately, some of the participations left the café before the start of the demonstration because they had hoped to learn more about ageing-in-place with dementia. So, with a smaller group of about 15 people we carried on with the demonstration because the participants were very eager to hear, see and learn more about MedGUIDE. This group was positive of the fact that the MedGUIDE platform is developed for medication-adherence. They all recognized the problem addressed, but they also gave some critical but positive feedback on the version we demonstrated. Their feedback is of huge value for the team and we are working towards improvement of the MedGUIDE platform to have it ready for the trials aligned with the giving expectation about the MedGUIDE platform. So we all have to put some extra effort to make the MedGUIDE platform easy to use for the future.