Health technology - INM
Health technology
Research in the unit for health technology includes: Treatment of cognitive impairment - dementia care, continuous care, technology assisted treatment, tertiary prevention; social and human aspects within welfare technology - human-machine interface, patient process, informal care network, domains of volunteer work, processes of inter- and intra-organisational collaberation, social participation; aging - activity and exercise, healthy life style, primary prevention (fall prevention), secondary prevention (rehabilitation), independent life, activity monitoring, self-management; social robots - the human dimension, emotional response from users, health and well-being monitor, robots as companions. Welfare technology also provides an opportunity to develop new services, as well as improve the quality in many existing services. A typical research project within welfare technology can be about development and testing of solutions and services for elderly who need to manage longer time in their own homes or who needs to avoid social isolation.
Research projects within health informatics can be about development and testing of solutions that help patients to master their own health situation, simplification of cooperation between patient and clinician and technological solutions for prioritisation, triage, patient logistics and collaberation within the clinics. Knowledge based systems are not only about patient data, but also about software able to combine knowledge with patient data and automatically present knowledge based advice and suggestions for health care.
Our larger projects
Purpose: The project will create synergies between the furniture industry and innovative ICT solutions through a process of cross sector specialisation. The goal is to:
- Create functioning methods for product design
- Make furniture with focus on safety, reliability and special requirements and preferences for elderly living at home.
Contacts: Prof. Arthur Serrano (PI), Prof. Beatrix Vereijken, Trine A. Magne
Finansiering: The European Union's Regional Development Fund
This project will create four sense gardens (SENSE-GARDEN) in Norway, Belgium, Romania and Portugal. Pictures, videos, music and smells will be used to stimulate the different senses of elderly with dementia. Through personalisation of stimuli, SENSE-GARDEN will stimulate memory, communication and physical activity for the individual with dementia. The goal of SENSE-GARDEN is to reconnect the individual with its sense of self, improve quality of life for people with dementia and their next of kin. You can read more about the project on its homepage.
Contacts: Jon Sørgaard, Trine Magne
Early Warning Accompanies Robotics Excellence
The purpose is to improve the way of life of people with dementia and their next of kin.
Lifestyle monitoring can reduce the strain on next of kin and therefore extend the period where the informal caregiver can maintain the care and support for the person with dementia with emotional benefits in relation to the patients quality of life and social cost.
Contact: Jon Sørgaard
The Netherlands – Vilans; Sensara; ZZG Zorggroep; Italy - Universita Politecnica della Marche; JEF; Norway - Stjørdal kommune; NTNU; the Swiss Confederation - TERZ Stiftung; Multinational – Ascom.
Education
- Master's in health informatics
- International master's in Physical Activity and Health
- PhD programme in Medical Technology. The group provide supervision and research environment for PhD candidates in welfare technology.
- Two camps of experts in teams:
- Technological solutions contributing to activity and participation for persons with special needs.
- Innovative societies with virtual reality and robots: Welfare technology of the future.
- Digital cultures - in collaberation with Department of multidisciplinary culture studies.
What is health technology?
Health technology is about welfare technology and health informatics, and use theories and methods from natural science, social science, humanities and engineering to develop more knowledge about, and technological solutions for the health and welfare services as well as those who will benefit from these services.
To implement and use technology also requires a reorganisation of the health and welfare services.
Within the subject area, interdisciplinary collaberation between system developers, techologists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, nurses, economists and other professional groups is also necessary.