Help to raise awareness for dementia

On Friday 19th May, drop into the CATCH Home Lab in the Innovation Centre, Sheffield (S1 4DP) for a cup of tea and some cake to create more awareness for dementia and raise money to support those trying to find a cure and support the care of people with the condition.

4th IN-LIFE Pilot Site meeting takes place in Greece

In September, members from the only UK pilot site, Sheffield, joined partners from across Europe for the 4th IN-LIFE meeting in Chalkidiki, Greece.

An intense three days of meetings saw Professor Arlene Astell and Dr Sarah Smith join more than 20 project partners from Spain, Greece, Slovenia, the Netherlands and Sweden to update the Consortium on the progress of their specific work packages.

The six pilot sites are currently in the process of recruiting participants and delivering the various interventions that each site has chosen to develop and pilot. Nearly 2,500 participants will be involved across the six sites including people living with dementia, informal carers, health professionals and additional stakeholders.

In Sheffield, we are piloting the Computer Interactive Conversation and Reminiscence tool (CIRCA) with over 400 participants. Along with our UK project partner, Sheffcare, we have successfully completed phase one with over 60 residents of Sheffcare homes.

NHS ethical approval has also just been received and the site will begin recruiting from Sheffield Health and Social Care and Sheffield Teaching Hospitals shortly.

We’d say the team earned a glimpse of sunshine after making such great progress.

To find out more about the IN-LIFE project, visit the website or contact Laura Murray. 

IN-LIFE - a truly international project

In CATCH, one of our exciting international projects is Independent Living Functions for the Elderly (IN-LIFE); a three year multidisciplinary European project, funded by Horizon 2020.

IN-LIFE aims to prolong and support independent living for people with cognitive impairments, through personalised Information and Communication Technologies services. Building on existing knowledge and further development of 19 different services from across Europe, this web based platform will promote home activities including communication, health maintenance and mobility based on feedback from large-scale, multi-country pilots.
Ultimately, IN-LIFE will be an open, cloud- based, reference architecture to be tested in six Europe-wide pilots in Greece, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and the UK, with over 1,200 older people with cognitive impairments, 600 formal and informal caregivers, and 60 other stakeholders.

Our pilot in Sheffield (the only UK site) consists of four phases involving 220 people living with dementia, 100 health professionals, 80 informal caregivers and 12 stakeholders. Phase 1 is nearly complete. Here, 11 small groups of people with dementia were recruited from the Alzheimer’s Society and Sheffcare. Phase 2 will begin in September 2016 and will involve a further 120 people living with the condition to be recruited from Sheffield Teaching Hospitals and Sheffield Health and Social Care.

Sheffield is focusing on communication, social interactions and leisure. We know that dementia presents as a decline in short term memory which leaves a relatively intact long term memory until much later through the course of the condition, therefore preserving older memories better than newer ones. Participation with social activities and interactions with others depend primarily on an intact short term memory as this plays a vital role in human communication. In our pilot, we will be using an existing software application: Computer Interactive Reminiscence and Conversation Aid (CIRCA), with large quantities of participants to test the efficacy. CIRCA is an innovatively designed interactive software application comprising generic digital media including video, music and photographs. Previous evaluations of CIRCA have established a number of benefits for both the person living with dementia and those in supporting roles, formal or informal.
The IN-LIFE project will end in January 2018 by which time all six pilot sites will have had the opportunity to host workshops and events for every project partner. The Sheffield event in December 2015 was a great success and these regular meetings are essential in the successful collaboration of such large studies across multiple disciplines, sites and countries.

In CATCH, we’re committed to the UK remaining a welcoming home of global scholarship and we will continue to ensure our research knows no geographical boundaries.

To find out more about the #WeAreInternational campaign and to show your support, visit http://www.weareinternational.org.uk/