1. COMPANY
   

EVONDOS  ( https://www.evondos.fi/ )

2. SEMINAR’s focus

As the world population gets older the two questions asked by EVONDOS are:  how ICT supports our eldery to increase their cognitive and physical activities to slow down their memory dysfunctions? How best to use new technologies to benefit the older generation in their cognitive functions?

3. DESCRIPTION

Financial Times: Evondos among Europe’s fastest growing companies

Evondos is growing fast, and as a recognition of that Financial Times, the world’s leading global business publication, listed Finnish Evondos among Europe’s fastest growing companies in their FT1000 list for 2021. In the list, Evondos was named the 211:th fastest growing company in Europe. Evondos placed as the second fastest growing company in the pharmaceutical category and the 13th fastest growing company in the Nordics. 

Evondos is a Finnish health technology company founded in 2008. The company offers an automated medicine dispensing service. The technology-based service consists of a medicine dispensing robot delivered to the home care client’s home, a remote care system, and numerous other service elements that support independent living at home.

The service is used by more than 200 municipalities in the Nordics and more than 10 million doses have been dispensed to patients. Evondos headquarter and production facilities are located in Salo, Finland. The company currently employs over 130 employees in the Nordics.

Evondos is among the first companies to bring robotization and AI into home care services. Evondos offers a robotized solution for safe medicine distribution in municipal professional home care. With the Evondos service, home care clients will take medication as prescribed: the right medication, in the correct dosage, at the right time.Evondos service not only increases medical adherence and patient safety but also offers possibilities in process optimization for the municipality. With the service, extended independent living is enabled which again in many instances have proven to reduce need for help with other vital tasks.

Homecare clients are provided with the Evondos robot that assists the client by dispensing medicines at the right time. The robot provides guidance in taking medications, both by issuing spoken instructions and sound signals, and by displaying written instructions on the device screen with indicator lights. If the medicines are not taken for some reason, the robot notifies the care organization or family members. The care organisation and care staff may monitor the progress of pharmacotherapy in real time from the control system, and also remotely using a mobile phone application. Relatives may also be granted access to this information.

Please see the video on  service description embedded at EVONDOS website.

4. CHALLENGE:

Forgetfulness can be a normal part of aging. As we get older, changes occur in all parts of our body, including our brain. As a result, some people may notice that it takes longer to learn new things, or they don’t remember information as well as they did when younger, or they lose things easily like their mobile phone or their glasses.  Memory can be also stressed through emotional problems such as stress, anxiety, depression, the feeling of being sad, lonely, worried or bored. Trying to deal with life changes, for some people, can make them feel confused and forgetful.

Independent seniors, who can still live on their own and get some care assistance, are the users of the EVONDOS robot, and this is the audience for this challenge. These seniors have reported memory problems and their desire to improve their memory skills. We know that to have a healthy brain it is necessary to exercise cognitive and physically. However, what kind of meaningful exercises can we promote using digital technology utilizing the EVONDOS medication service to improve memory skills? It is important to mention that most of the seniors utilizing EVONDOS already use other type of technologies such as  bracelets if they fall, sensors in the house sending alarms to care organizations, e.g.: sensors in the fridge to detect if they have eaten or not, or sensors in their  home doors to detect if the senior has  been out for too long, there are GPS technology for them to not get lost, etc.

During this session we will explore how ICT supports our elders to enhance their memory functions? What activities do you suggest? These activities might be used by your loved ones, or us when we get older.

5. DAY and TIME:

Monday 24 of January from 12:00 to 16:00 hrs

6. SEMINAR  LOCATION

University of Turku, Agora building room 110A/B.

7. ENROLLMENT:

https://link.webropol.com/ep/EVONDOS22

Enrollment closed on Thursday January 20th, 2022 at midnight.

8. PRE-ASSIGNMENT
   

The following pre-assignment has the intention to assist you in your preparation for this session, according to your academic background.  The report of this assignment has to be submitted by Saturday January 22nd. The preparation consists of three sections:

Section A.  This section of the pre-assignment has the objective to  invite you to explore the topic: to prevent or address memory dysfunction in elders. 

Do a brief research about what is recommended for having a healthy memory. There is a considerable amount of information online. Please detect trustable sources, including academic research, and select three sources of information. Summarize your findings of the advice and activities recommended for promoting a healthy memory, if possible focusing on elders.

Section B. Second section focuses on exploring what applications are already in the market addressing this problem and analyze these applications with your findings on Part A. 

For this section do a small benchmarking and detect three to five digital applications (e.g. games, nursing tools, new technologies) addressing the memory challenges in elders. Based on your findings on part A of this assignment, analyze the selected digital application you detected and examine the pros and cons of each tool.

Section C. This section invites us to be critical in our ideas when designing for others. 

Please look the following video:  https://vimeo.com/128873380/description

After look at the video answer the following question:

• What would you do differently if you were designing these “smart” tools for elders?
• What learning experience can you convey from these “smart” tools for the new activity tool to be developed in our session with EVONDOS?

If you have access to seniors (e.g family, friend, neighbor) and it is possible for you to watch the video with her or him, and ask her or him their opinion about these tools and what would she or he would like to do differently with those smart tools, please report this in your assignment as well.

Report:  Write your findings of each section (A,B and C) and submit your report to Carolina Islas caislas[@]utu.fi  with the subject line:  EVONDOS pre-assignment