Presentation of ISISEMD project in Thessaloniki

On Friday the 18th February I had the pleasure to present the ISISEMD project in a round-table session at the 7th Panhellenic Conference on Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders, held in Thessaloniki Greece. This is a very important national conference that attracts the interest of the involved people (medicine doctors, practitioners, caregivers, etc) in topics related to Alzheimer and dementia. The topic of the round table was “The evolution of technology in treating dementia” and was moderated by Prof. Bamidis who is the co-ordinator of the ICT PSP project LongLastingMemories. Moreover, findings and results of the T-Seniority project have been presented as well.
It was a short but very interesting session as I had the chance to see the progress of the other projects as well and to present the ISISEMD status and results. The audience of the session (approximately 30 people) was attending with big interest especially when I talked about the so called “good stories” of the project. It was apparent, as most of the audience had no big familiarity with technological developments in this domain, that some of the good stories, like for instance identifying if a patient is out of bed for too long over night, is something that they were not aware of how it can be achieved with state-of-the art and affordable technological means. The general discussion that took place after the presentations was mainly focused on the ethical aspects of such technological interventions in treating the dementia. Ethical issues might arise if the technology is actually monitoring the patients with dementia in the domotics environment or outdoors. It is though evident that this relies in the volunteering of the patients (and their relatives) to be involved in such projects. The audience though expressed their interest in such technological developments and it relies in the near future to prove that such solutions can actually work for the benefit of the patients and their caregivers.
I would like to thank Prof. Bamidis for inviting our project in this round table. It seems that the two projects can have a solid liaison ground and common presence in future dissemination activities.
-Antonis