MS FERNANDEZ: So hi everybody. Thanks for an invitation for presenting our project which is called Chess and the aim of this project is support home stay with people with dementia.
First of all, let me introduce our team. It's a multidisciplinary team. Myself, I am based at UCD and I have a medical background, with a specialty in rehabilitation medicine. Laura McCaine is a post-doctoral investigator and she's a physio. David Singleton is our system engineer from UCD. Professor Catherine Blake is the head and the professor at UCD School of Physical Therapy. Doctor Dermot Power, the consultant geriatrician from Mater Hospital and he will be working with us. Professor Brian Cawfield, the Director of Inside Centre of UCD where I'm doing my PhD.
So first of all, I would like to explain the term of what is connected health. It's a new term and the truth is that it has many definitions and maybe this is one of the most accurate but there is not a good standard one.
So instead of trying to define with this kind of long definitions the better way to say what is connected health is trying to explain what it means for the patients and for the health professionals.
Connected health is a new model of health management using new technologies that aims to create a good flow of information between the patients and the health professionals. And to put that information into the correct place and at a correct time so they can use it as a tool for a better way of communication between them and also for helping the decision making in the process of the health
The good thing of the connected health it has many different terms. New terms are emerging like E health and digital health and assisted living but the best is the patient is at the centre of the care health system and all of the stakeholders in that process of health care are connected in a more efficient way.
So our project is connect health support home stay in dementia and the first idea was to create something for chronic patients and trying to focus in a high population of diseases like we just focus on dementia.
Some of the reasons thinking about it was having it in mind about the demographic ages of the world population and the increasing population with more chronic diseases and how their care plan is not well coordinated and how they don't have access to the resources or maybe they don't know which resources they can have access to.
And another main point for our research was taking into the consideration the main role of all these processes of caring is done by the care givers and as we know usually they are non-professionals, members of a family and relatives and take care of this person and all of their health and financial issues and everything included in that, not a coordinated care plan and lack of resources.
And with time it can lay some negative feelings that may appear then, like stress, depression, burdening and in many of the studies it says this is one of the main risks of the care home placements for this chronic patients.
So here, there is a draft of what is our project is and what is the role and the general needs. The main part of the project will be in that case the person with dementia and the care giver. We're going to do some daily, weekly and monthly monitoring for these clinical parameters like the physical activity, and heart rate and blood pressure and weight and sleep.
In the care giver, we're going to do some assessments to measure their burden and stress and depression and how is their quality of life.
All this data and all these measurements will be up loaded on a health portal. The health portal will be an application on a tablet. Where apart from all that kind of measures, we'll have the past medical history of the person with dementia, a patient profile, information about the disease and operation and their care plan.
Not only the care giver will have access to the health portal. The health professionals including GPs consultants and public care nurses, they will have a person log in account so they will have access to all that information from the patient and the care giver and at the same time when the patient comes into the clinic that they will write their clinical notes on that portal as a way of sharing information between them.
So if any change in the treatment or any new decision or any change in the care plan has been made all of them will know it.
This is how the App will look like, what they will see when they open the App in the tablet. We'll have four sections, one called information that will allow for the care giver information about the dementia and the operation of the disease and some sources and the past medical history of the patient with the past surgeries and the treatment and the patient profile and the measures.
These sections are not ready yet so I can't show them to you but the other ones in the profile they will have two parts. The biography of the person with the dementia and the care giver and the journal like a diary where the care giver can write any issues that they will have.
And in the measurements, all the measures will be up loaded there and shown as a graph, as a better way of knowing how it's been the evolution with that clinical parameter for example the blood pressure since the last visit with the doctor.
For measuring all those clinical parameters we're going to use some medical devices, an example like this for the blood pressure, like the ones that most of us have been using. For the sleeping there will be a monitor, for the wi-fi and for measuring the activity an activity tracker like a watch so like the thing I am wearing so it's not obtrusive for the patients.
With this we would like to evaluate the activity with this new care model in supporting people with dementia and their care givers in sustaining their patient at home. We would like to evaluate these with three main objectives, a continuous monitoring with the cognitive status and the physical activities and the social activities and their quality of life of both the person with dementia and care giver and to evaluate this new care plan in combination with the traditional care.
So we have will have a group that won't use any of this technology and also measure the group and measure the experience. What does it mean? It means knowing how difficult it is for you to use this technology and the App and how happy or not they are using it.
For the moment we like to know if we can bring any benefits using this new technologies at home for the care giver. Trying to guess if we can reduce their stress or burden or their depression that they could have with the user of process of caring and also if we can improve their quality of life. For the moment we would like to have the perception of the health professionals. So to know how they see each work withing that in their daily practice in their clinic.
For this we'll have two groups, one group that we'll use the tradition technology and the tablet and all the devices and the other one will not use any technology and both of them will have full care plan and we're not going to make any change with them. We're only going to make some study.
It will be a 12 month period of follow up but the technology group will have only the system for six months for deployment. We're going to make sure daily or weekly, nothing obtrusive monitoring and we're also going to do formal assessments every three months through different questionnaires related with their physical and social activities and their quality of life.
Well, still we're developing the App. It's not completely ready but we're hoping to have it soon so we can go to the next step that will be measuring the usability and experience and if it's easier or not and trying before, giving it directly to the patient and care givers and still waiting for the approval for the committee and as soon as we have it we'll start to recruit the patients and thanks so much for your attention.