Overview

The Alzheimer Gesellschaft München is an institution for self-help and representation of interests of people with dementia, their relatives and caregivers from their social environment. The joint commitment of relatives, volunteers and representatives of various professional groups supports domestic systems for people with dementia, including outpatient, day-care and inpatient services. Through the co-creation network M:UniverCity the cooperation with the DTLab was established.

On a socio-political level, the Alzheimer Society works for more understanding and helpfulness among the general public and thus contributes to increasing acceptance and integration of people with dementia.

It also applies for people with dementia that technical aids and devices equipped with artificial intelligence, e.g. smartphones and speech recognition systems such as "Alexa", are increasingly finding their ways into their everyday lives. It is therefore important for them to be involved in the development of technology. Only then will devices emerge that will actually benefit them.

Problem

The students of the course "Software Engineering I" asked themselves the following two core questions:

• Which technical solutions can help people with dementia and/or relatives and professionals?
• Besides risks, does digitalisation also have the potential to support the everyday life of people with dementia, especially in the early stages, so that they can lead a self-determined life for longer?

The potential of the voice-controlled assistance system "Alexa" in the environment of people with dementia was then investigated using prototypical applications.

Approach

With support from Amazon Web Services, the students went through the innovation process "Working Backwards". Part of the process was an interview with a man affected by dementia, who answered important questions about his life and how he dealt with the disease. The students then entered the information they received into so-called empathy maps, which were intended to show the influence of the disease on those affected and their families.

During the interview, the students learned that it is advantageous for dementia patients if they actively train their cognitive abilities. However, there is still a lack of suitable applications that are specifically tailored to dementia patients.

The students therefore tried to find concrete solutions for this problem in the form of Alexa applications. First ideas were collected using the "Crazy-Eight-Ideation"-method. The best idea of the team working on this task was elaborated in more detail with the help of a fictitious newspaper article ("Press Release") and FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions). The solutions developed for this problem rely on the individuality of each training course, which is provided by a dynamically adapted skill system. This system starts with ten introductory questions from a wide variety of subject areas, such as mathematics or history, and then slowly - depending on learning progress - begins to increase or adapt the difficulty of the questions. In the prototype phase the prototype was documented and implemented according to Scrum.

Prototype

The prototype can be found on Amazon.de. It is currently in the beta testing phase. As soon as the application is released, it can be activated and tested via the "Skills" section of the website.

Next steps

The chairman of the Alzheimer Society, Peter Sprenger, reported on this and other prototypes of other students with similar tasks at the board meeting of the Alzheimer Society in February 2020. The Alzheimer Society is now trying to apply for financial support to further develop one of the applications created.