Intelligente thuiszorg voor dementie

admin — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 12:21:00 +0000

Reinforcement Learning-based Conversational System for Personalized Support

In the Netherlands alone, dementia affects approximately 290K people. As the population ages and caregiver shortages grow, supporting people with early-stage dementia to maintain their ability to live at home as long as possible becomes crucial. In this project we aim to develop an intelligent and conversational home system to enhance the quality of life for elderly people with early-stage dementia. We propose to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to provide personalized care by mapping the need and preference of individuals.

Built based on the just-in-time adaptive intervention (JITAI) design concept, the conversational system will adapt to contexts of individual users and therefore provide the right types of support at right timings taking account personal preferences and contextual status.

We will design and develop multimodal interventions (combining text, image, music, etc.) for target users, as well as the optimal deliver strategies on conservational interactions between the intelligent system and human users.

The project will fit under the umbrella of KIA social theme ‘Health & Care’. This innovation enables families and caregivers to leverage advanced AI technology for improved support, offering societal and economic benefits by enhancing care quality and easing the burden on caregivers.

CALL
Wanted: participants for this research, november 2025!

Project duration

1 Jul 2025 -30 Jun 2028

Project manager

Shihan Wang, Utrecht University

Researchers

prof. dr Somaya Ben Allouch
Stephanie Kramer MSc
dr Michel Oey
Wen-Tseng Chang, Utrecht University

Funding

CLICKNL

Partners

illi Engineering B.V.

Wie Zorgt?

admin — Fri, 01 Jul 2022 13:56:00 +0000

The Development of an Intelligent Healthcare Environment that Supports Healthcare Professionals

CAUSE
The problem addressed by this research project is the high workload of care professionals in dementia care. Due to an increase in the number of elderly people with dementia, the demand for care is increasing, while the shortage of care professionals is growing. This workload can be greatly reduced by using smart technological innovations such as an Intelligent Care Environment.

HOW DOES AN INTELLIGENT CARE ENVIRONMENT WORK?
An Intelligent Care Environment uses sensor techniques and uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to deliver personalized care by identifying and responding to care needs. The Intelligent Care Environment works together with the care professional. This solution direction is further elaborated in this project together with four healthcare parties and three innovative SME organisations.

Just-in-time adaptive interventions (JITAI) are developed based on the case ‘Support with food and drink’, so that the healthcare professional is supported in performing certain care tasks.
An example of an intervention is giving the person-adjusted sensory stimuli (sounds, lights and projections) at the right time that stimulate seniors to eat. Such interventions reduce the pressure on the healthcare professional and improve the quality of care.

ATTENTION TO HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS
Not only the integration of the AI modules is important, but also how the AI is ‘shown’ to the healthcare professional. That is why this project also pays extra attention to the interaction between healthcare professionals and the Intelligent Healthcare Environment, which increases ease of use and allows both client and healthcare professional to experience a higher degree of autonomy.

By further developing the prototype of the Intelligent Care Environment in healthcare institutions in collaboration with various healthcare professionals and paying attention to the development of AI and Interaction with the system, the wishes and needs of the healthcare professionals can be integrated into the Intelligent Care Environment. This is done in three iterations, with the three successive available living labs becoming increasingly complex and realistic.

The project has been featured in the first press newsletter of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (2025).