The life of elderly people with dementia on a card

When will the garbage collectors come for the glass and paper in the weeks ahead? When do I need to go the dentist again? My mobile phone won’t work because I forgot to charge the battery. What was my PIN code again? The clocks have changed from winter to summer time; how do I set the clock on my oven? My son is coming to collect me to take me for a walk in the park; when did we plan that for?

We are all confronted with these types of questions (and many more) on a daily basis, and we have a very simple solution for it: we put up messages, agendas, appointments and suchlike on a notice board. We can consult all the information that we need without having to turn on the computer.

Each day, people who suffer from the beginnings of dementia find themselves confronted with even more questions: what do I have to do when I get up in the morning? I fancy a cup of coffee, but I can’t remember how to make it. When will the doctor come this week? These people may even forget that they have a notice board in the house where they can find the information. An intelligent notice board would provide a perfect solution for this; a notice board that tells you what you have to do at certain times of the day, or reminds you that you need to drink some water because it’s very hot today, etc. Alcatel-Lucent, in collaboration with In-Ham and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, has worked on the Casensa research project into these and many more different issues. Casensa stands for ‘Casa sensible’: a sensitive home in two senses of the word. Homes are fitted with sensors, but the homes are also sensitive to the needs of residents. Casensa forms part of the European ITEA2 AmIE project. Let’s look at it in detail.

Video: The Casensa project explained by the developers.