THNK’s first multidisciplinary research project

Steffie Verstappen
Article by: Steffie Verstappen
THNK’s first multidisciplinary research project

There is increasing pressure on health care providers who work with elderly and mental patients. This pressure will only increase as the population ages. It cannot be relieved by increasing work productivity due to the naturally high intensity of working with these types of patients. The SELEMCA project—short for “Services for Electro-Mechanical Care Agencies”—examines to what extent intelligent systems can replace health care professionals and provide effective, efficient, and pleasant solutions.

 

THNK’s Director of Education and Research, Johan Hoorn, is the author of the research proposal and the project’s principal investigator. THNK’s Research team will conduct applied and fundamental research for the project, based on the integration of experience design and technologies, human-centered content, media, and interfacing technologies.

 

The SELEMCA project: Welcome to the age of "Caredroids"

THNK has been invited to participate in an inspiring Dutch initiative which aims to relieve increasing pressure on health and care professionals. Known as SELEMCA, the project will explore how intelligent systems, robots coined as “Caredroids”, can replace care professionals to improve productivity and decrease workload pressure. These Caredroids can serve as coaches and care providers for consumers of health care services, hospital patients, and residents of nursing homes.

The SELEMCA project will focus on the user-centered design of services that connect technologies related to agents, robots and ambient and virtual worlds to patients, care professionals, and volunteer care providers. Specifically, SELEMCA will explore concepts related to product-service systems, medical form completion, patient exercise assistance, and the monitoring of medicine intake.

THNK will facilitate SELEMCA’s multidisciplinary research by creating a “Living Lab” around the project. A Living Lab promotes hands-on learning by creating situations and networks that encourage interaction, collaboration, and innovation among professionals from various fields. In SELEMCA’s case, this includes health care professionals, robotics designers, psychologists, game experts, product designers and others.

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