The first international conference of the EU project Certification-D took place this year successfully as live stream in front of about 60 participants.
This year's theme: "Users & producers. demands & use". In recent years, the range of technical products for the support of dementia patients has grown considerably. But do the products offered by companies match the needs of the users? What characteristics do products need to have in order to be basically or well suited? How can companies find support for checking these questions in their products through the Certification-D project? The conference provided answers to these and many other questions. The results are now documented on the homepage nweurope.eu/Certification-D.
In a morning session, the project with its four Living Labs and test procedures was presented. In 2021 and 2022 external companies can apply and have their products tested and certified free of charge. The application documents can be downloaded by the turn of the year at the latest.
At the end of the morning Dr. ing. Liselore Snaphaan with her keynote "Living Labs as exploration and working method" will present the conference topic "Users & producers. demands & use" in a general and exemplary way how Living Labs can be used for product improvements.
This was followed in the afternoon by Koen Vervoort from the European Network of Living Labs from Brussels. He emphasised the role of Living Labs and quality assurance under the title "Empower everyone to innovate".
Under the title "A dynamic Ecosystem for connected Healthcare", Directeur Segment Santé Fabrice Broutin of Schneider Electric France presented the entrepreneurial view: How can a company optimally take into account user needs in product design?
Professor Arlene Astell from the University of Toronto, Canada, critically reviewed what has been achieved so far under the title "Technology Transforming Dementia". Decades of practical and scientific experience with the perception of the disease itself, as well as the technological products offered for support, formed the background to her remarks.
The conference was concluded by Prof. Dr. Ralf Ihl (Alexian Research Center Krefeld), who presented the latest scientific findings on the needs of PwD for technical aids with his paper "Dementia and Technical Support" and drew a bridge over the previous lectures.
The Certification-D project is funded by the Interreg Northwest Europe programme with 2.2 million euros. A consortium of eleven private and public partners from Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain and the Netherlands is working on a certification procedure for technical products to support dementia patients. The experts have now met for the first time purely virtually for two days to compare standards and certification steps.
Contact details: Daniel Zerweck, +49 176 62515841, d.zerweck@alexianer.de