Symbiosis Summary

Alzheimer is a global problem with dramatic impact and new approaches need to be considered regarding prevention, diagnosis, treatment, confrontation. Following the vision of World Health Organization and Alzheimer’s Disease International for innovative approaches to Alzheimer’s Disease, our system, named Symbiosis, aims at creating a novel environment to facilitate, understand and incorporate the needs of the whole Alzheimer’s community (patients, caregivers and doctors).

As for the patient, Symbiosis proposes a fruitful way of natural interaction through state-of-the-art technologies, such as augmented reality (AR) scenarios, body motion tracking and EEG signal processing. All activities from games, body-music therapy to AR scenarios are designed and developed to meet the special needs of an AD patient with special emphasis given on the elimination of social exclusion. Mental and physical exercising, a sense of autonomy and increased self-confidence are the primary focus of all applications along with adaptation to personalized behaviour, preferences and needs. In this way, the patient’s environment is normalised to his/her needs and not vice versa.

The patient progress is continuously monitored by both caregiver and doctor, offering valuable feedback information that helps them schedule the therapy plan and daily routine and perform the system appropriate adjustments according to it. Moreover, extra services are available for the caregiver including emergency notification from mobile application as well as consulting and psychological support at a specialized forum community.

Symbiosis’ goals include:

•Establishment of a novel, holistic approach to the special needs imposed by Alzheimer’s disease, offering services and tools at three different groups involved in the problem, i.e., Patients; Caregivers; and Doctors.

•Personalization to each patient’s specific characteristics through system adaptation and self-regulation procedures.

•Development of adapted user’s scenarios following the patient’s profile and schedule.

•Assistance to caregiver for preparation, customization and optimization of patients care and monitoring procedure through a continuous update about their progress via well-managed Web Services.

•Doctors’ updating via reporting material with statistical analysis options. 

•Emphasis on patient’s autonomy from caregiver.

•Alleviation of negative feelings and contribution to the sustenance of quality of life in an environment that promotes the real concept of Symbiosis.

Symbiosis provides the bed-set not only for exploration of team’s abilities to think about and re-design Alzheimer’s approach, but also to understand and integrate the needs of the whole community involved i.e., patients, caregivers and doctors, in a joint attempt to facilitate easing of their suffering, provide efficient monitoring and contribute to a better quality of life.