Monitors, but free: Can a locating software protect people with dementia? – Südwestpresse

Besigheim

It is a scientific project to which the Robert Breuning pin has admitted: How to locate and monitor people with dementia with software and smartphone – so that they have more freedom

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Many families in which members are suffering from dementia, you know: the story of the grandmother who has at night to leave the house and not finding your way back, the drama about the tangled nursing home residents who has made himself in slippers on the way to his former home, but does not find it. A “Hinlauftendenz” called Michaela Sowoidnich, director of the Robert Breuning pin in Besigheim, this behavior of dementia patients who set out to search for their past.

Often it is sufficient if the leave relatives or the staff of the nursing home the usual way, to find the confused people. Sometimes citizens in the home or with relatives call because they found an old person confused or disoriented. But Sowoidnich knows the cases where the Rettungshundestaffel had to be used or the police helicopter above the home circled to help in the search.

By participating in a scientific project want Sowoidnich and their Besigheimer supporters of the Local Alliance for people with dementia now explore whether modern technology can help rediscover confused people easier to monitor with radiolocation and Smartphone, while at the same giving them more freedom. To this end, working the Protestant Home Foundation, the recipient of the Robert Breuning pin, with the Institute for Technology Assessment (ITAS) together.

“Quartrback”, the bulky name of this project, refers to the idea of ​​the back to give dementia patients within their district again a piece of security and self-determination. Because still it happens that ill people be included, if the members have to work or go shopping, white Sowoidnich. Is a network such as the Local Alliance in Besigheim but firmly rooted in the neighborhood, could be clearly dealt mindful with the patient, but also to the families, hoping Sowoidnich.

One of the aims of the project is therefore a to develop software that enables the daily routes of patients are recorded and given the time of day, weather conditions and the individual expression of a kind of disease risk profile is created. Leaving the patient the usual way, for example, at night or at low temperatures, “gets the closest assistants a message,” Sowoidnich describes the idea. About an app, a tracking software, including navigation system of confused man were found quickly. At best, the system recognizes “when what assistance is appropriate,” says Sowoidnich. Thus protected, the people with dementia in the neighborhood could move freely, members would back free. All this is still in the future, because before the idea becomes reality, the software must be programmed, but especially important ethical issues to be clarified. These include the data protection and the right to informal self-determination, as when the data on patients and helpers be centrally collected to establish a kind of control center. To clarify it, want an early stage involve citizens and stakeholders the ITAS. The Institute has therefore written Besigheimer and invited to participate. Approximately 40 people have pledged to participate on Monday 9 November, a workshop in the Robert Breuning pin. A second workshop on Thursday 12 November is aimed at members of the local Alliance.