The rosetta project

To support the growing number of community-dwelling persons with dementia, alternative solutions, such as assistive technologies, are needed. In the European Rosetta Project, three separate ICT systems were improved, integrated, and evaluated with the objective to create one modular system that helps community-dwelling people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia in different stages of the disease to retain their autonomy and quality of life that postpones institutional care and that supports the carers. The Rosetta system integrates the systems Elderly Day Navigator (EDN), Early Detection System (EDS), and Unattended Autonomous Surveillance-Advanced Awareness and Prevention System (UAS-AAPS). EDN supports persons in daily functioning in the areas of memory, social contact, daily activities, and safety; EDS monitors daily behavior and timely detects changes in functioning; and UAS-AAPS automatically detects emergency situations (like falls) and generates alarms to carers. The development of the system took place in close cooperation with persons with severe cognitive impairments/dementia, informal and professional carers, and dementia experts. The final prototype was tested in a controlled field trial with persons with severe cognitive impairments or dementia in three countries. The results from the evaluation study show that participants positively valued the usefulness of the system, but that the user-friendliness could be improved. Though there were no statistically significant effects on outcome measures in this explorative small-scale trial, participants indicated that the Rosetta system changed their lives in some ways, for instance, by structuring the day and by improving feelings of safety and security. Participants had no ethical concerns regarding the (visibility and application of) sensors and cameras. Future implementation of the Rosetta system may (cost-)effectively support the growing number of community-dwelling persons with dementia during the mild and more severe stages of the disease.