Postcard Memories: A virtual / tangible memory sharing application for adults with early-stage dementia (ESD)

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martha Ladly ◽  
Kartikay Chadha
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Application ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Self Confidence ◽  
Technical Ability ◽  
Summative Assessments ◽  
Potential Benefits ◽  
Memory Sharing ◽  
Research And Design

Dementia is a major cause of disability among older adults, with 50 million people worldwide living with the disease and 10 million new cases diagnosed each year. Postcard Memories is a web-based, virtual memory-sharing mobile application, designed to support individuals diagnosed with early-stage dementia (ESD), their families, friends and caregivers. The research and design methods employed argue the value and importance of elder‐computer interaction, and greater personalization, supporting and enhancing elder’s engagement in both the virtual and physical mnemonics of memory sharing. The researchers implemented a two-stage study design, including formative and summative assessments of low- and high-fidelity prototypes, pre-, and post-testing questionnaires, patient and carer interviews and ‘think-aloud’ testing methodologies for interaction evaluation. Through quantitative and qualitative assessments this research demonstrates that the Postcard Memories application has potential benefits, including enhanced technical ability and hence self-confidence with new technologies; and enhanced interactions with family members, a promising outcome for those living with ESD.

Prediction of Future Market Price for Agricultural Commodities

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sagar Pathane ◽  
Uttam Patil ◽  
Nandini Sidnal
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Application ◽  
Market Price ◽  
Commodity Prices ◽  
Future Price ◽  
Future Market ◽  
Graphical Interface ◽  
Agricultural Commodities ◽  
Agricultural Commodity ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Agriculture Products

The agricultural commodity prices have a volatile nature which may increase or decrease inconsistently causing an adverse effect on the economy. The work carried out here for predicting prices of agricultural commodities is useful for the farmers because of which they can sow appropriate crop depending on its future price. Agriculture products have seasonal rates, these rates are spread over the entire year. If these rates are known/alerted to the farmers in advance, then it will be promising on ROI (Return on Investments). It requires that the rates of the agricultural products updated into the dataset of each state and each crop, in this application five crops are considered. The predictions are done based on neural networks Neuroph framework in java platform and also the previous years data. The results are produced on mobile application using android. Web based interface is also provided for displaying processed commodity rates in graphical interface. Agricultural experts can follow these graphs and predict market rates which can be informed to the farmers. The results will be provided based on the location of the users of this application.

A study protocol: co-designing a mobile application to enhance communication, safety and wellbeing for people living at home with early stage dementia (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Davies ◽  
Bie Nio Ong ◽  
Sudeh Cheraghi-Sohi ◽  
Katherine Perryman ◽  
Caroline Sanders
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Application ◽  
Design Research ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Design Method ◽  
Mobile Apps ◽  
Care Service ◽  
Normalisation Process Theory ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
People With Dementia ◽  
At Home

BACKGROUND Background: There is a growing interest in using mobile applications in supporting health and wellbeing. Evidence directly from people with dementia regarding the acceptability, usability and usefulness of mobile apps is limited. It builds on ‘My Health Guide’ which was co-designed with people with cognitive disabilities. . OBJECTIVE Objective This paper describes the protocol of a study evaluating an app designed for supporting wellbeing with people living with dementia, specifically focusing on enhanced safety through improved communication METHODS Method: The study will employ design research, using participatory qualitative research methods over three cycles of evaluation with service users, their families and practitioners. The study will be developed in partnership with a specialist home care service in England. A purposive case selection will be used to ensure that the cases exemplify differences in experiences. The app will be evaluated in a ‘walkthrough’ workshop by people living with early stage dementia and then trialled at home by up to 12 families in a ‘try-out’ cycle. An amended version will be evaluated in a final ‘walkthrough’ workshop in cycle 3. Data will be collected from at least four data sources during the try-out phase and analysed thematically (people with dementia, carers, practitioners and app usage). An explanatory, multiple-case study design will be used to synthesise and present the evidence from the three cycles drawing on Normalisation Process Theory to support interpretation of the findings. RESULTS Results: The study is ready to be implemented but has been paused to protect vulnerable individuals during the Coronavirus in 2020. The findings will be particularly relevant for understanding how to support vulnerable people living in the community during social distancing and the period following the pandemic, as well as providing insight into the challenges of social isolation arising from living with dementia CONCLUSIONS Discussion: Evaluating a mobile application for enhancing communication, safety and wellbeing for people living with dementia contributes to key ambitions enshrined in policy and practice, championing the use of digital technology and supporting people with dementia to live safely in their own homes. The study uses a co-design method to enable the voice of users with dementia to highlight the benefits and challenges of technology and shape future development of apps that potentially enhances safety through improved communication.

scholarly journals Acceptance Commitment Therapy Intervention for Custodial Grandfamilies

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 928-928
Author(s):  
Manuela E Faulhaber ◽  
Amie Zarling ◽  
Jeongeun Lee
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Acceptance Commitment Therapy ◽  
Self Confidence ◽  
Commitment Therapy ◽  
Acceptance And Commitment ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Biological Parents ◽  
American Children

Abstract Millions of American children under the age of 18 are being cared for by their grandparents and without the presence of the biological parents. The number of custodial grandfamilies has significantly increased over the last five years. Recent studies have shown that custodial grandparents (CPGs) are often facing specific challenges in life, such as lower emotional well-being, higher parenting burden and stress related to this unique situation. Despite these findings, few interventions take a strengths based approach to improve their mental health and resilience. We describe our efforts to address these issues by proposing intervention anchored in the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), emphasizing the importance of acceptance of challenging circumstances outside of one’s control and promoting resilience among participants. The program consists of a web based ACT program with online coaching meetings, six common core sessions and six separate sessions for each age group over a time period of six months. This program is unique in the sense that it utilizes both individual and group session techniques to facilitate the learning process. Main active ingredients of this program are to promote effective coping strategies, to reduce parenting stress among grandparents and to increase life skills (i.e., decision-making, proactivity) among grandchildren. We are hypothesizing that participating in the ACT program will help CGPs to improve self-efficacy, emotional well-being, higher self-confidence, social competence, lower depressive symptoms, and parenting distress, thereby leading to positive outcomes such as improved mental health and higher resilience.

The Multi-Relationship Evaluation Design Framework: Designing Testing Plans to Comprehensively Assess Advanced and Intelligent Technologies

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian A. Weiss ◽  
Linda C. Schmidt ◽  
Harry A. Scott ◽  
Craig I. Schlenoff
Keyword(s):  
Intelligent Systems ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Evaluation Framework ◽  
Evaluation Design ◽  
Design Elements ◽  
Summative Assessments ◽  
Extensive Evaluation ◽  
Level Of Knowledge ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Key Terms

As new technologies develop and mature, it becomes critical to provide both formative and summative assessments on their performance. Performance assessment events range in form from a few simple tests of key elements of the technology to highly complex and extensive evaluation exercises targeting specific levels and capabilities of the system under scrutiny. Typically the more advanced the system, the more often performance evaluations are warranted, and the more complex the evaluation planning becomes. Numerous evaluation frameworks have been developed to generate evaluation designs intent on characterizing the performance of intelligent systems. Many of these frameworks enable the design of extensive evaluations, but each has its own focused objectives within an inherent set of known boundaries. This paper introduces the Multi-Relationship Evaluation Design (MRED) framework whose ultimate goal is to automatically generate an evaluation design based upon multiple inputs. The MRED framework takes input goal data and outputs an evaluation blueprint complete with specific evaluation elements including level of technology to be tested, metric type, user type, and, evaluation environment. Some of MRED’s unique features are that it characterizes these relationships and manages their uncertainties along with those associated with evaluation input. The authors will introduce MRED by first presenting relationships between four main evaluation design elements. These evaluation elements are defined and the relationships between them are established including the connections between evaluation personnel (not just the users), their level of knowledge, and decision-making authority. This will be further supported through the definition of key terms. An example will be presented in which these terms and relationships are applied to the evaluation design of an automobile technology. An initial validation step follows where MRED is applied to the speech translation technology whose evaluation design was inspired by the successful use of a pre-existing evaluation framework. It is important to note that MRED is still in its early stages of development where this paper presents numerous MRED outputs. Future publications will present the remaining outputs, the uncertain inputs, and MRED’s implementation steps that produce the detailed evaluation blueprints.

scholarly journals The Interpretative Flexibility, Instrumental Evolution, and Institutional Adoption of Mathematical Software in Educational Practice: The Examples of Computer Algebra and Dynamic Geometry

2008 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 379-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Ruthven
Keyword(s):  
Computer Algebra ◽  
Mathematical Knowledge ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Dynamic Geometry ◽  
Educational Practice ◽  
Explicit Recognition ◽  
Mathematical Techniques ◽  
Institutional Adoption ◽  
Interpretative Flexibility

This article examines three important facets of the incorporation of new technologies into educational practice, focusing on emergent usages of the mathematical tools of computer algebra and dynamic geometry. First, it illustrates the interpretative flexibility of these tools, highlighting important differences in ways of conceptualizing and employing them that reflect their appropriation to contrasting practices of mathematics teaching. Second, it examines the cultural process of instrumental evolution in which mathematical frameworks and teaching practices are adapted in response to new possibilities created by these tools, showing that such evolution remains at a relatively early stage. Third, it points to crucial prerequisites, at both classroom and systemic levels, for effective institutional adoption of such tools: explicit recognition of the interplay between the development of instrumental and mathematical knowledge, including the establishment of a recognized repertoire of tool-mediated mathematical techniques supported by appropriate discourses of explanation and justification.

From Bench to Bedside: New Technologies for Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment

2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michal-Ruth Schweiger ◽  
Hans Lehrach
Keyword(s):  
Cancer Diagnosis ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Predictive Biomarkers ◽  
Patient Treatment ◽  
Malignant Neoplasms ◽  
Advanced Stage ◽  
Common Cause ◽  
The Us ◽  
Risk Patients

According to the centre for disease control (CDC) malignant neoplasms are the second most common cause of death in the US in 2004 (1). One of the major problems is that most of the cancers are diagnosed in an advanced stage, which prohibits curative treatment. In order to circumvent these problems, we need to develop strategies that allow identification of risk patients and tumors at an early stage. In addition, it is necessary to identify prognostic and predictive biomarkers that guide patient treatment at different stages of the disease.

scholarly journals 343 - Best Practice Guidance on Human Interaction with Technology in Dementia – Recommendations from the INDUCT Network

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (S1) ◽  
pp. 103-103
Author(s):  
Rose-Marie Dröes ◽  
Yvette Vermeer ◽  
Sébastien Libert ◽  
Sophie Gaber ◽  
Sarah Wallcook ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Best Practice ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Target Groups ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
International Training ◽  
People With Dementia ◽  
Informal Carers ◽  
Care Technology

The Interdisciplinary Network for Dementia Using Current Technology, INDUCT, is a Marie Sklodowska Curie funded International Training Network that aims to develop a multi-disciplinary, inter-sectorial educational research framework for Europe to improve technology and care for people with dementia, and to provide the evidence to show how technology can improve the lives of people with dementia. Within INDUCT (2016-2020) 15 Early Stage Researchers worked on projects in the areas of Technology to support every day life; technology to promote meaningful activities; and health care technology.Three transversal objectives were adopted by INDUCT: 1) To determine the practical, cognitive and social factors needed to make technology more useable for people with dementia; 2) To evaluate the effectiveness of specific contemporary technology; and 3) To trace facilitators and barriers for implementation of technology in dementia care.The main recommendations resulting from the research projects are integrated in a web-based digital Best Practice Guidance on Human Interaction with Technology in Dementia which will be presented at the congress. The recommendations are meant to be helpful for different target groups, i.e. people with dementia, their formal and informal carers, policy makers, designers and researchers, who can easily select the for them relevant recommendations in the Best Practice Guidance by means of a selection tool. The main aim of the Best Practice Guidance is to improve the development, usage and implementation of technology for people with dementia in the three mentioned technology areas.This Best Practice Guidance is the result of the intensive collaborative partnership of INDUCT with academic and non-academic partners as well as the involvement of representatives of the different target groups throughout the INDUCT project.Acknowledgements: The research presented was carried out within the Marie Sklodowska Curie International Training Network (ITN) action, H2020-MSCA-ITN-2015, grant agreement number 676265.

Fueling Spin-offs: Case Studies of University-based Technology Start-up Funding

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-40
Author(s):  
Julie Lenzer ◽  
Piotr Kulczakowicz
Keyword(s):  
Product Development ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
New Products ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Private Investment ◽  
Building Relationships ◽  
Start Up ◽  
Single Path

The new technologies born from academic research can be very promising, yet they are often very early stage. University spin-off companies are uniquely positioned to tackle the risks associated with new technologies emerging from academia by developing proofs of concept, functioning prototypes, and new products. While these enterprises start from a solid research and development foundation, they face their own unique set of challenges—they are strongly anchored in the scientific and technological expertise that is typically backed by intellectual property but often lack the business experience needed to develop and market products demanded by customers. University spin-offs have access to substantial non-dilutive funding that can be utilized for advancing product development. While the relentless pursuit of these funds builds a company's credibility and improves its position for negotiating future private investment, university spin-offs would greatly benefit from an early focus on complementing their technology teams with their business teams. These new enterprises should consider pursuing private investment in parallel to utilizing sources of non-dilutive funding. Timing of private investment is extremely important to maximize the value of the opportunity, and, therefore, building relationships with investors early on and getting ready for executing an investment round can greatly increase odds for success. While there is no single path to formulate, pursue, and adapt successful financing strategies, lessons can be learned from real-life cases of university spin-offs that continue their journeys towards ultimate success.

MOBILE APPLICATION REMOVES SOCIETAL BARRIERS TO P4 MEDICINE

2017 ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
J.-P. Michel
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Mobile Application ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Global Evaluation ◽  
P4 Medicine ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Impact

The overlap between one innovative paradigm (P4 medicine: predictive, personalized, participatory and preventive) and another (a new definition of “Healthy ageing”) is fertile ground for new technologies; a new mobile application (app) that could broaden our scientific knowledge of the ageing process and help us to better analyse the impact of possible interventions in slowing the ageing decline. A novel mobile application is here presented as a game including questions and tests will allow in 10 minutes the assessment of the following domains: robustness, flexibility (lower muscle strength), balance, mental and memory complaints, semantic memory and visual retention. This game is completed by specific measurements, which could allow establishing precise information on functional and cognitive abilities. A global evaluation precedes advice and different types of exercises. The repetition of the tests and measures will allow a long follow up of the individual performances which could be shared (on specific request) with family members and general practitioners.

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