Village Landais Alzheimer, village that allows autonomy of people with Alzheimer

Publications Bank of innovations

Village Landais Alzheimer, village that allows autonomy of people with Alzheimer

Village Landais Alzheimer Public Interest Group

Imatge from Ehpadia website.

Residential complex with 105 people suffering from Alzheimer’s with a high degree of independence.

It is a small village designed exclusively to allow people with this disease to live autonomously, away from socio-sanitary centres and without the constant support of their relatives. Each inhabitant pays 24,000 euros per year and lives in a family-like house, despite sharing with other residents common spaces such as shops and a theater room. Sociosanitary care, on the other hand, is guaranteed by a group of professionals working there, as well as volunteers working in activities to promote the socialization of the residents.

The village is also a resource center for medical and therapeutic research, as studies are conducted there to assess the results and impacts of this innovative residential model.

Village Landais Alzheimer

e-NABLE, network of 10,000 volunteers making prosthesis with 3D printers

Publications Bank of innovations

e-NABLE, network of 10,000 volunteers making prosthesis with 3D printers

e-NABLE

Image from Enable the future Instagram profile

Online community of 10,000 people worldwide who voluntarily use their 3D printers to create hand and arm prostheses for adults and children who need it.

Individuals and organizations who wish to collaborate with the cause access the web to find users from more than 100 countries who need a prosthetic and have posted photographs showing and explaining the required prosthetic. The voluntary, then, contacts this person, downloads all the necessary information from the website, and adapts the available designs, which are in open source and free of rights, to the specific need of the person who will benefit. Once the prosthesis is printed, the voluntary person disinterestedly forwards it to the final beneficiary, who often lives in another country or continent.

In this way, through domestic manufacturing technology, people with low resources who cannot access a prosthetic because of their high price and/or the need to adapt them to children’s growth can have a free and customised prosthetic.
As an online portal, each can connect with people demanding from all over the world, although also can easily find plaintiffs living nearby and deliver the prosthetic to them personally.

e-NABLE

DPR, a smart tool to facilitate the work of primary care social service professionals

Publications Bank of innovations

DPR, a smart tool to facilitate the work of primary care social service professionals

Institut Municipal de Serveis Socials de l’Ajuntament de Barcelona (Barcelona City Council Municipal Institute of Social Services)

Picture by Sora Shimazaki on Pexels

Artificial Intelligence tool to support primary care professionals for social services. Analyzes cases and advises the professional workers to respond to the attended people. The primary care worker who serves a visit, after transcribing on the computer his notes about the most important person in the interview, pressing a button obtains in a few seconds from the DPR system (Requires, Problems, Resources in catalan) a recommendation on the response to give or the action to be undertaken.

DPR processes the annotations of the social worker, classifies the problem and the person’s request, and suggests to the professional the answer to give, according to the resources and services the institution can offer or advise. This “intelligent” system allows social professionals to respond more quickly, more safely and objectively to the user, and users to receive a clear diagnosis with high accuracy reliability.

This tool that automatizes the process of typifying the demands received by social service centers has been trained using machine learning techniques from the data of 300,000 interviews conducted by the social services of Barcelona City Council in previous years.

The DPR system is thus a tool of “collective intelligence”, which does not replace the decisions of social professionals, but provides them with guidance based on the collective experience of previous years and leaves the final decision on the response to each case or situation in their hands.

It is a pioneer tool in Spain which, in addition to supporting decision-making and providing guidance to professionals, makes it possible to improve the planning of resources and services of the administration.

Ajuntament de Barcelona Àrea de drets socials

WACS, automated and massive call service to vulnerable people

Publications Bank of innovations

WACS, automated and massive call service to vulnerable people

Hampshire County Council, PA Consulting

Picture from sabinevanerp on Pixabay

Service that makes automated calls to vulnerable people who are in their home and cannot attend social and health care centres on a regular basis or cannot receive close attention.

When a person who needs to be cared for is detected, the person receives an automated call with a voice from a real person, who asks him about his welfare state and possible needs. If the user needs to receive home care or if someone makes the purchase, for example, the system passes the call to a professional to specify the response to their demand.

This service used artificial intelligence techniques and was implemented in 2020 in the face of the inability of the Hampshire (England) government to monitor carefully and consistently vulnerable people during the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the need to quickly contact thousands of people who were isolated in their homes, the PA Consulting company developed this massive, automated contact system to cater for and fuel a large volume of calls.

Bringing Ingenuity to Life

Mentoria Social, mentoring for vulnerable young people to promote social inclusion

Publications Bank of innovations

Mentoria Social, mentoring for vulnerable young people to promote social inclusion

Coordinadora Mentoria Social

Picture from “Projecte Rossinyol”, a study that analyzes the impact of mentoring on migrant teenagers. / APPlying Mentoring

Platform of organizations that develop mentoring projects for young people and other vulnerable groups.

Coordinadora Mentoria Social, comprised of 11 partner entities and 8 member entities, brings into contact mentors with people at risk of social exclusion, mainly young people. With the aim of ensuring social cohesion and equal opportunities, the mentor is a voluntary person who is assigned a person to offer him or her their knowledge and experience.

In this way, both people share a few hours a week that enable mentoring to overcome labor, social, academic, etc. due to mentoring support and guidance.

Coordinadora Mentoria Social, through the formations it offers, also works to promote a quality mentoring model in the field of social action.

Coordinadora Mentoria Social

Gillie.AI, artificial intelligence that monitors patients at home

Publications Bank of innovations

Gillie.AI, artificial intelligence that monitors patients at home

Gillie.AI

Image taken from Gillie.AI’s website

Cloud service that, thanks to Gillie.AI technology, analyzes the medical and welfare data of people with long-term care needs, to turn them into practical information and personalize their attention.

Artificial intelligence allows those who take care of patients at home to constantly monitor their physical and mental wellbeing through a platform that monitors the condition of patients remotely.

Gillie.AI’s software analyzes the reports that workers produce when visiting patients and draws conclusions: if there has been an improvement, if the patient’s situation has worsened in a particular aspect… By doing this, risk patterns can be easily identified and urgent needs can be anticipated.

In addition, professionals can organise patients’ visits according to how critical their state is and receive direct notifications to their smartphones in case of emergency.

GILLIE Healthcare

TippyTalk, a solution for people with a verbal disability to communicate

Publications Bank of innovations

TippyTalk, a solution for people with a verbal disability to communicate

TippyTalk

Kids using TippyTalk on a tablet. Picture taken from TippyTalk website.

Application that allows people with nonverbal autism to express themselves through images representing elements of everyday life. By choosing different icons, they can decide who they want to talk with – their mother or father, for example – and tell them what they need, how they feel or what draws their attention. Parents, or the caregiver, receive a text message that allows them to understand what the person with autism cannot explain by words.

The person who takes care of someone with autism can download the app from the App Store or Play Store, and create several items that will be chosen by the person who uses it. These can be your own photos, drawings or any image, and anyone doing this will also be able to write the text that you will receive via SMS according to the selected items. For example, when a fridge is pressed, it means that the person is hungry. In addition, you can also typeset a sound or a word that sounds each time an item is selected.

Currently, the application is only available in English, although you can change settings to put the words in any language. In terms of subscription, TippyTalk is a paid application, but they offer 14 days of free trial.

TippyTalk

MK360, immersive technology for the care and welfare of older people

Publications Bank of innovations

MK360, immersive technology for the care and welfare of older people

Broomx and Grup Arrels

Users of the Grup Arrels enjoying an immersive experience. Retrieved from Broomx’s website.

Projector that allows immersive group experiences of 360 degrees to the range of services, residences, and open centres for older people to perform cognitive, physical, sensorial, and emotional stimulation activities with great therapeutic power.

Thanks to the collaboration between the Catalan company Broomx and the Foundation Grup Arrels, they have fostered diverse experiences of application of immersive technology MK360 in old users of different services: treatment of people with cognitive disorders, dementia and Alzheimer’s; the creation of relaxing spaces where music and images surround the users; funny and energizing experiences, such as the projection of a roller coaster tour; or the recreation of city sites in an immersive way, an experience that has been especially useful during the months of residential confinement due to Covid-19.

The 360-degree images that the Grup Arrels projected through the projectors MK360 of Broomx were recorded by the group’s own socio-sanitary professionals, using their mobile phones, in community and neighbourhood spaces (parks, markets, streets, etc.) in the city of Barcelona.

Broomx

Easy Reading, making webpages accessible to people with cognitive disabilities

Publications Bank of innovations

Easy Reading, making webpages accessible to people with cognitive disabilities

Athena, Dart, FunkaNu, JKU, KI-I, PIKSL, Texthelp, TUD, W3C

Test of the Easy Reading software. Retrieved from the Easy Reading website

Software for Internet users with cognitive disabilities that offers a wide tool package to make it easy to read and understand any existing web page. It can be installed on the computer of those people who need it, and Easy Reading is responsible for adapting the content of web pages in the way most useful way for the user: making the structure simpler; changing the colours and design; explaining the content with symbols, videos or images; defining the words that the text includes; passing the text to a voice; etc. The software offers all these functions semi-automatically, as they require a certain interaction with the user.

To develop the project, “peer research” has been used to take into account the real needs of users, involving those who will use the end product, in this case people with cognitive disabilities. These are the main target group of Easy Reading, but not the only one, as it can also benefit old people with cognitive disabilities or other people with cognitive difficulties.

Easy Reading

Helpper, people with support needs connect with people willing to help them

Publications Bank of innovations

Helpper, people with support needs connect with people willing to help them

Helpper

Young helpper helping an elderly woman to do groceries. Retrieved from Helpper’s website.

Service that connects people who need some support for their daily life tasks (helppies), with people close to them, in the same neighbourhood or village, who are willing to help them (helppers).

Helppper is a model that seeks the comfort of both sides, because it allows helppers to specify what their availability is (schedule, types of service they can offer, if they offer it free or with remuneration, etc.); and the helppies to select the support to be received (what person, for which support needs, schedule, modality, price, etc.). Helpper offers three subscription modalities: Basic, Standard and Premium, to make it easier for each person to personify the level of assistance they want to receive.

People with disabilities, with chronic diseases, elderly people, parents and mothers who are very busy, and even carers who need help in caring for dependents, can access the service.

The types of assistance or possible tasks to offer/receive include: small home repairs; food aid; support with administrative processes; travel and transport support; company to mitigate unwanted loneliness; babysitting; etc.

The service is available in French and Dutch.

Helpper