| Sumario: | Purpose Alzheimer's disease (AD) and dementia-related disorders that usually affect an aging population represent a major challenge for health care systems. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can be employed to help assess and evaluate a patients' functional impairments. Aside from its usefulness during assessment, ICT can also play a key role in patient treatment while providing a source of stimulation for the patient. This idea underlies for the development of Serious Games (SGs), digital applications especially designed for other purposes than entertainment. SGs provide training and education, and can also be used to inform, communicate, and market products or ideas. For example, SG can play different roles by either taking the lead in creating a societal/ ideological impact on specific subjects, or by enhancing a user's aptitude or cognitive/ physical functions. Method The objective of the IA workshop was to gather recommendations for the development and use of SG targeting people with frailty syndrome, AD and other dementia-related disorders. The following recommendations were endorsed by stakeholders in the field, after being collected and discussed during the Innovation Alzheimer workshop 2013 (IA workshop 2013). The IA had a two-step design as follows. First round: The first round took place in Nice, Italy on November 7, 2013. Fifty participants including health care professionals and family association representatives (n=25), ICT engineers (n=10), companies involved with ICT and economical experts (n=15) participated in group discussions during three sessions: (i) A session working on a Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threat (SWOT) analysis of SGs in the health sector, with a special focus on the assessment and rehabilitation of dementia-related disorders; (ii) a discussion and voting session; and (iii) an SG design session (2 groups of 4 participants), with the objective to design an SG targeting patients suffering from AD or related disorders. Second round: The second round took place during the 6th edition of Clinical Trials on Alzheimer's Disease conference held in San Diego, CA, USA on November 14, 2013. The expert panel included geriatricians, epidemiologists, neurologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and ICT engineers. Results & Discussion The presentation will describe the recommendations derived from the workshop in two main sections. The first section will be dedicated to a SWOT analysis of the field of SG in the domain of health and rehabilitation, with a specific focus on dementia-related disorders. The second section will report on practical recommendations concerning the development and use of SG for people with dementia.
|
|---|