Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference:	EP/K001272/1
Title:	The Portrait System for Care Staff of People with Dementia
Principal Investigator:	Hanson, Professor V
Other Investigators:
Researcher Co-Investigators:
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Department:	School of Computing
Organisation:	University of Dundee
Scheme:	Standard Research
Starts:	12 June 2012	Ends:	11 June 2014	Value (£):	10,027
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Summary on Grant Application Form
Dementia is a growing concern worldwide, with an estimated 35.6 million people living with dementia. As the population ages, this number will soar. The care of people with dementia has recently been receiving a great deal of consideration as it has become recognised that current care solutions too often are not meeting the standard of care that most of us would want for loved ones. The Portrait system is designed to help care staff see the whole person not simply as a set of service needs, but rather as an individual. In this goal, it is a part of the welcomed trend of care-giving that seeks to move away from task-based care to person-centred care. Portrait addresses the needs of the growing population of people in care homes. The work takes a novel approach to this area by focusing on care-givers, addressing the need to facilitate conversations between care staff and residents. For residents with communication difficulties, such as those that arise from late stage Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia, it is difficult for care staff, givien their limited time and skills, to initiate conversations with such residents. The Portrait system was designed from the perspective of care staff. It provides an easy to use and quick means of getting information about the lives of residents before they entered the care home. In short, it allows care staff to know who the people are. The Portrait system is the culmination of a research and development effort by the project researcher, Dr Gemma Webster, in which the Portrait software was created to act as a communication bridge between carers and people with dementia through the use of simple but effective 'Portraits'. To date, much research and several commercial offerings have aimed at memory books and reminiscence therapy for people with dementia. Like our Portrait software, many of these use multimedia software. While these memory tools might be shared with care staff, none were specifically designed to meet the needs of care staff. Portrait is unique in terms of specifically targeting the work schedules and usability needs of care staff. The Portrait system consists of multimedia portraits of each care home resident presented on an easily and quickly accessible touch-screen interface. Informed by background research on what people would like care staff to know about them if they went into a care home facility, each portrait contains information about the person's family, key life events, preferences and hobbies or interests. The system has been tested with staff from two care homes and was well-received in terms of providing the care staff with quick and easy access to usable information about residents. Early work on Portrait had impact in terms of both use at a care home, community engagement, and an award for social implications. This Telling Tales project will be used to provide greater impact. The Portrait software will be installed at additional care homes in the UK and commercial licencing will be pursued.
Key Findings
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Organisation Website:	http://www.dundee.ac.uk