POSTHCARD

Project details

Title: PersOnalized SimulaTion Helping Caregivers to Cope with AlzheimeR Disease
Acronym: POSTHCARD
Project identification code: AAL2017-45-POSTHCARD
European Level Coordinator: University Hospital of Geneva
Participants:

# Participant organisation name Participant short name Organisation type Country
1 (Coordinator) University Hospital of Geneva HUG End-user Switzerland
2 University of Geneva UNIGE Research Switzerland
3 FaTHER Equipment FTH SME Romania
4 ConnectedCare CCARE SME Netherlands
5 University of Twente TWE Research Netherlands
6 Alzheimer Netherlands AZN End-user Netherlands
7 Vilans VIL End-user Netherlands
8 Connectar CON End-user Belgium

Contracting Authority in Romania: Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding
Contract no.: 54/2018
Romanian public budget: 487.224,00 lei / € 108.272,00
European Commission: 411.879,00 lei / € 91.528,00
Own funding: 282.721,00 lei / € 62.827,00
Date: 16.04.2018 - 10.04.2021
Project director: Fredrik Nistor
Email: fnistor@father.guide

Short description

Alzheimer is a disease that impacts not only the life of the patients themselves but also that of their carers. Indeed, many Alzheimer patients are supported at home by their family relatives or home caregiver. The difficulty to deal with the disease may impact strongly the quality of life of these informal and formal caregivers.
The behaviour modifications induced by the evolution of the illness can alter the quality of the relationship between the patient and his relatives, transforming simple daily activities into overwhelming challenges. A poor quality relationship between the patient and his or her caregiver is a well-known cause of burden of both carers and patients and is a trigger to abandon homecare of Alzheimer patients.

One source of tension is the misunderstanding of the behaviour of the patients and the poor knowledge and insufficient training about the proper behaviour to adopt when interacting with the patient. Learning strategies to cope with the daily life activities is a recognized intervention to mitigate caregiver's stress. A lot of educational resources are provided by many associations mostly as brochure, video or online courses.
Although they all contain very valuable material elaborated by the best specialists, they fail to change caregiver's behaviours. These brochures often advise to seek help from specialized services, which caregivers tend to do too late, when they are overwhelmed, overloaded and stressed by the situation at home. In addition, the proposed training programs are costly for organizations and time demanding for informal caregivers, which creates another barrier.

To ensure the success of this project, we will rely on the integration of partner's existing technology and its tailoring to create a tool that responds to the user's needs. A co-creation design approach involving care specialists and caregivers will ensure that the technology brings a clear added value over the traditional solutions targeting a similar objective.
The previously identified educational resources (book, website) about the most critical situations for caregivers will be transformed into lively scenarios that will be used in the simulation by a team of narrative simulation specialists.

Finally technological partners will integrate different components and services. The missing system components will be developed on the basis of a service-oriented architecture (SOA) allowing the components to easily exchange data between one another. The intervention we will develop will be provided directly to the caregivers through a web platform developed by one of our technical partners and thus will rapidly reach a high technology readiness level.

Portal

The dedicated website of the POSTHCARD project is accessable through internet at the fallowing address:

Project plan
Stage/ Activity description Activity category Completion date Results/ Type of deliverable Status
Stage 1 - Platform development Platform initial development - software/report 31.12.2018 Completed
Act 1.1 - Developing the technical specification of the serious game / simulation to be implemented A3 (A) - Experimental development in effective collaboration or dissemination of results
Act 1.2 - Elaboration of the technical specification on platform security A3 (A) - Experimental development in effective collaboration or dissemination of results
Act 1.3 - The new platform architecture A2 (A) - Industrial research in effective collaboration or with the dissemination of the results
Act 1.4 - Integration of backend components into the new platform A2 (A) - Industrial research in effective collaboration or with the dissemination of the results
Act 1.5 - Adapting the user interface to the new platform A2 (A) - Industrial research in effective collaboration or with the dissemination of the results
Act 1.6 - Integrating the narrative engine into the new platform A2 (A) - Industrial research in effective collaboration or with the dissemination of the results
Act 1.7 - Integrate content into the new platform A2 (A) - Industrial research in effective collaboration or with the dissemination of the results
Stage 2 - Platform Development and Testing Development and testing of platform / software / software 31.12.2019 Completed
Act 2.1 - Design and development of technical and economic analysis documentation of the project A3 (A) - Experimental development in effective collaboration or dissemination of results
Act 2.2 - Integration of backend components into the new platform A2 (A) - Industrial research in effective collaboration or with the dissemination of the results
Act 2.3 - Adapting the user interface to the new platform A2 (A) - Industrial research in effective collaboration or with the dissemination of the results
Act 2.4 - Integrating the narrative engine into the new platform A2 (A) - Industrial research in effective collaboration or with the dissemination of the results
Act 2.5 - Integrate content into the new platform A2 (A) - Industrial research in effective collaboration or with the dissemination of the results
Act 2.6 - Testing the new platform A2 (A) - Industrial research in effective collaboration or with the dissemination of the results
Act 2.7 - Iterative optimizations of the new platform A2 (A) - Industrial research in effective collaboration or with the dissemination of the results
Act 2.8 - Establishment of manual development strategy / presentation documents A3 (A) - Experimental development in effective collaboration or dissemination of results
Act 2.9 - Documentation drafting of manufacturing preparation A3 (A) - Experimental development in effective collaboration or dissemination of results
Stage 3 - Platform completion, testing and promotion Platform completion, testing and promotion - report / software 31.12.2020 Completed
Act 3.1 - Design and development of technical and economic analysis documentation of the project A3 (A) - Experimental development in effective collaboration or dissemination of results
Act 3.2 - Testing the new platform A2 (A) - Industrial research in effective collaboration or dissemination of results
Act 3.3 - Iterative optimizations of the new platform A2 (A) - Industrial research in effective collaboration or dissemination of results
Act 3.4 - Development of the large-scale production platform A2 (A) - Industrial research in effective collaboration or dissemination of results
Act 3.5 - Establishment of manual / presentation strategy A3 (A) - Experimental development in effective collaboration or dissemination of results
Act 3.6 - Preparation of manufacturing preparation documentation A3 (A) - Experimental development in effective collaboration or dissemination of results
Stage 4 - Platform completion, testing and promotion II Platform completion, testing and promotion - report / software - part II 10.04.2021
Act 4.1 - New platform testing - part II
Act 4.2 - Platform development for large-scale production - part II
Dissemination
15 Nov Facebook campaign

POSTHCARD advertising campaign reached this time an audience of almost 38.000 people.
Check it out here…

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16 Jul Facebook campaign

POSTHCARD advertising campaign reached an audience of over 17.000 people.
Check it out here…

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19 Mar Signs of the Times magazine

POSTHCARD is mentioned in the Signs of the Times magazine.
Check it out here…

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30 Nov HotNews editorial

HotNews.ro news portal also made a reference to the POSTHCARD article.
Check it out here…

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30 Nov Romanian Insider editorial

Another news agency shared the article wrote by StartUP Cafe about POSTHCARD to their fallowers. This is nothing but great news…

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29 Nov StartUp Cafe editorial

A well known agency in promoting entrepreneurial culture wrote about POSTHCARD to their readers. The article provides in-depth…

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27 Nov Life & Health magazine

In the last months of 2018, FaTHER managed to gather attention from various organizations and made important steps towards a successful…

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20 Nov Hope Channel TV interview

Fallowing an invitation from the Hope Channel TV Romania, FaTHER team presented the POSTHCARD project in special session of interview. This…

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22 Sep International Alzheimer Day in Bucharest, Romania

International Alzheimer Day Remember me – 3rd edition 21 September 2018, Bucharest, Romania As autumn began this year, Alzheimer Romanian Society…

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23 Aug UPB Research Center Campus

During the visit in Bucharest of the POSTHCARD team for the scheduled workshop, Politehnica University of Bucharest sent their representatives in order for a networking session. While getting to know each other better...

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Stages & Activities 2020

Design and development of technical and economic analysis documentation of the project

In this task the team contributed to the overall consortium analysis of the market opportunities of the product.

Testing the new platform

In this task the team created and implemented automated testing procedures for the new platform.

Iterative optimizations of the new platform

In this task the team optimized the platform for large scale production.

Development of the large-scale production platform

In this task as well in the above one the platform is optimized for large scale production.

Establishment of manual / presentation strategy

In this task the team participated, with the consortium partners, at the creation of the platform.

Preparation of manufacturing preparation documentation

In this task the team participated, with the consortium partners, at the creation of initial drafts of the manufacturing documents for the platform.

Stages & Activities 2019

Design and development of technical and economic analysis documentation of the project

In this task our team participated in the market analysis for Romania and in the development of the technical documentation for the backend.

Integration of backend components into the new platform

In this task FaTHER Equipment team developed the backend components that were integrating the running platform. This is a software development task.

Adapting the user interface to the new platform

In this task FaTHER Equipment team worked with the front-end team on how the interface should look like and implemented it into the running platform. This is a software development task.

Integrating the narrative engine into the new platform

In this task FaTHER Equipment team worked on the software module that integrated the narrative engine in the overall platform. This is a software development task.

Integrate content into the new platform

In this task FaTHER Equipment team created the 3D models and animations of avatars and animation and other elements of the game’s environment, and the user interface house and game characters.

Testing the new platform

In this task our team tested and developed monitoring and debugging software modules for an easier testing process. Also our team resolved several bugs in that were presented.

Iterative optimizations of the new platform

Our team participated on multiple optimization stages of the platform gathering feedback and developing in the end the final architecture and the running platform that is ready to be tested by the end user.

Establishment of manual development strategy / presentation documents

Our team worked together with other teams at developing presentation documents and working on the dissemination strategy.

Documentation drafting of manufacturing preparation

In this task our team documenting all the requirements and development guidelines on how the platform can be ready for large scale manufacturing.

Stages & Activities 2018

Developing the technical specification of the serious game / simulation to be implemented

In this task our team researched how the serious game will perform and come up with the technical specifications of the final POSTHCARD platform, that will integrate the serious game. In this task were selected the server specifications, the database type, the programming languages for creating the platform and so on.

Elaboration of the technical specification on platform security

In this task our team researched the different security concerns for an online web platform. At the end of our research a set of security features were selected and implemented in the first version of the POSTHCARD platform, that we launched in November 2018.

The new platform architecture

In this task our team converted the user requirements into unitary technical specification. Based on this architecture the first version of the POSTHCARD platform was launched in November 2018.

Integration of backed components into the new platform

Following the platform architecture task, this task consists of the development of the first version of the platform, that we launched in November. We have a real open platform, easy to upgrade and able to self-adapt very quickly to support future advancements in technology.

Adapting the user interface to the new platform

In this task FaTHER Equipment team developed a user friendly interface for the POSTHCARD platform. The user interface is simple, intuitive and adaptable to end users’ abilities and requirements, taking into account the principles of design for all and the accessibility for older adults.

Integrating the narrative engine into the new platform

In this task the Romanan team integrated the narrative engine with the rest of the platform. The result is a flexible game that is build on top of a narrative generation system that will enable to modify scenario data based on the user personalisation.

Integrate content into the new platform

In this task FaTHER Equipment team created the 3D models and animations of avatars and animation and other elements of the game’s environment, and the user interface house and game characters.

This work was supported by a grant of the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research and Innovation, CCCDI – UEFISCDI and of the AAL Programme
with co-funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme project number 54/2018 within PNCDI III

The content of this material does not necessary represent the oficial statement of the European Union or Romania's Government