The quality of oral care among frail elderly people in nursing homes is low. Due to reduced mobility or cognitive functioning, elderly people fail to complete the oral care ritual sufficiently. Once this happens, caregivers are obliged to take over this task. Unfortunately, in many cases this does not happen due to the difficulty of the task, the uncomfortable feeling of intimacy for both the elderly person and the caregiver, and the high time pressure caregivers experience during the morning care ritual.
Dental Robotics aims to improve the quality of care among frail elderly by developing an automatic toothbrush that takes away these pains. The Dental Robotics toothbrush simply requires the elderly person to bite in a mouthpiece. This enables the caregiver to brush all teeth at the same time while applying the right pressure and angle without skipping any teeth. The toothbrush completes this task in only 10 seconds, helping to reduce the total amount of time of the oral care ritual.
However, for people with dementia such a product, bringing along new and different interactions, is difficult to comprehend. This lack of understanding can lead to problematic behaviour. This can be apathic, anxious, aggressive or agitated behaviour, all of which is difficult to overcome by the caregiver. Currently, the most common solution that caregivers use to overcome problematic behaviour is skipping the oral care altogether. When this happens, the care ritual cannot be completed. This is a major challenge for Dental Robotics, leading to the following design goal:
Increase the acceptance of the Dental Robotics toothbrush among people with dementia and their caregivers, by creating a more pleasant experience for both.
Person-centred care is a way to avoid problematic behaviour in the long term. This is an approach that puts the client with dementia in the centre of their own care, and uses the preferences and habits of the client during the care ritual. Since everyone has a different history, the way in which care should be approached should be different for everyone as well. In addition, the symptoms and severity of all clients are different. In order to apply this person-centred care, it is important to have a good understanding of the person in question.

Blink is an app that aims to enable caregivers to apply the person-centred approach over the entire care ritual. This is supported by the theory that, when the entire care ritual is executed without any problematic behaviour, the client with dementia will be put at ease and be more prone to accept such a difficult product as the toothbrush.
Every time Blink is used for a specific client, the content changes. It will adapt based on the connection between the client and the caregiver, the severity of the dementia and the specific tool preferences for both the caregiver and the client. This helps to keep the use of Blink engaging. Over time, the connection between the caregiver and the client will grow. At the same time, the dementia gets more severe, making it increasingly difficult to connect and have conversations. The focus of the app will be on establishing a connection in the beginning, and slowly shifting towards more active help, such as an easy way to turn on music or videos.
Together, this will help to create a more pleasant care moment for both the client and the caregiver, ensuring an increased acceptance of the automatic toothbrush developed by Dental Robotics.

Over the world, the amount of patients with dementia is increasing every year. In the Netherlands this amount is already growing to 1 out of 5 people suffering from dementia. This is due to better diagnosis and the aging generation.

Nevertheless, there still has not been found a solution to cure this disease. This means that a closer look should be taken in how the wellbeing of patients with dementia could be improved to make sure that this last part of their life is experienced with no feeling of insecurity or fear. Therefore the aim of this project was to improve quality of life of patients with dementia, by design. This was done for nursing home patients with dementia that lived intramurally.

During analysis, three patient groups were found that defined the different type of patients with dementia: Wanderers, Zen dementing and Equilibrium seekers. By creating a patient journey from these different types of patients, together with a journey of formal caregivers, it was found that wanderers get restless just after lunch break because of the decrease in stimuli in the environment. From this it was decided to design for this specific patient group and try to provide them with a meaningful activity. Therefore the design goal of this project was: Improving Quality of life for patients with dementia, by designing a product (-service) that facilitates meaningful time spent. A meaningful activity is something that could provide the patient with a feeling of contributing something, how the patient feels with the process and involvement of the activity or how the patient stays connect with who they were in the past ( e.g. reminiscence).

My favourite is a product that helps patients to calm down by providing the patient with 2 or 3 stimuli.
The product is designed in such a way, that the shape giving the feeling of holding a baby or pet, due to the intuitive shape. The fabric provides the patient with a stimuli through touching the product and giving the option for reminiscence by the fabric choice. The eyes give the patient the option to make a connection with the product.
Inside the product, an electronics part simulates the rising and falling of the chest which can be felt through the back of the product.
Testing showed that My Favourite was drawing the attention from the patients when presented to them. It evoked a positive response from different behaviour profiles. More female patients were attracted to it and gained a positive experience with the product.