Hosted by Cassidian, France

Approaching the delivery of the first prototype, an Integration week (18-22 March 2013) was hosted by Cassidian France. All the technical partners sent their components and developers in a workshop dedicated in physically connecting the Dem@Care system for the first time. The meeting aimed to establish and test communication and conformity between components, identify improvements for individual components and the overall system and prepare for the pilots in April. Also it was the first opportunity to recognise any limitations of the system and define expected improvements for V2.

The team has been working for the last months towards an updated version of the architecture. The implementation of this architecture was materialised for the first time this week and developers had the opportunity to see how the individual components communicate with each other and contribute towards the Dem @Care system’s support to people with dementia, their carers and clinicians. The system demonstrated how the information and feedback is created to provide the necessary support for remote management and treatment of dementia. Even though the system is in early stages, the first results seem promising.

An integration scenario was generated to aid the integration and testing process. The scenario was formulated in a way that includes all components; is complex enough and realistic or challenging enough for the system; has clinical significance and provides a testing routine for the entire system.

The scenario was finalised during the workshop and focused on four main activities:

• A phone call that is detected and speech is analysed.
• Preparing tea and drinking/eating.
• Moving indoors and having a fall.
• Being in bed and leaving bed

Figure 2: The sensors and displays

After communication was established with all components, a step through the scenario was performed:

• Raw data was collected by all sensors.
• The analysis components were initiated and delivered their observations.
• The semantic interpretation of the observations was conducted.
• A brief daily summary was presented to the user.

The scenario was completed successfully and the developers concluded in lessons learnt, required changes, the next steps and requirements for the different pilots.

The Dem@Care Integration team is continuing the work and is working towards delivering the Dem@Care first prototype for the pilots in April 2013.

So watch this space…