Already 6 months after the kickoff meeting, the POSTHCARD team gathers again, this time in sunny Romania. Consortium partner FaTHER is in charge of the organisation and the team got to know this beautiful city and its dynamic citizens.
Two new members of the University of Twente and of FaTHER (FTH), Ruud and Frederik are introduced to the consortium. The two-day programme involves lots of lively discussions, brainstorming sessions and progress reporting.
Session on project management
One of the agenda items is to update the risk analysis by identifying and assessing factors that can adversely affect the success of the project.
Session on technology (co-creation and development)
To ensure the success of this project :
- We will rely on integrating the partner’s existing technology and customising it to create a tool that meets user needs. A co-creation design approach involving healthcare specialists and caregivers will ensure that the technology offers clear added value over traditional solutions that have a similar purpose.
- The previously identified educational sources (literature, internet) on the most critical situations for healthcare professionals will be transformed into vivid scenarios that will be used in the simulation by a team of narrative simulation specialists.
- Finally technology partners will integrate various components and services. The missing system components will be developed on the basis of a service-oriented architecture (SOA) that allows the components to exchange data easily between each other.
- With regard to the interface, we will make additional proposals concerning the interaction pattern. The feasibility of integrating emotion into the character will be evaluated.
Session on evaluation
The Posthcard product contains a simulation of a real-life situation in which the user needs to support someone who is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. The goal of the simulation is to provide caregivers an interactive tool to practice their decision-making skills.
The results of the evaluation conducted in June by means of interviews, questionnaires and mock-up testing were presented.
The purpose of this pretest was to determine :
- The degree of convenience experienced by the participants, (formal and informal caregiver), when using an ICT tool, especially a computer.
- Their frequency of use of a computer or a tablet.
- If they are positive towards the design.
Session on dissemination
Presentation of the methodology that will be used in order to build a coherent, an integrated communication strategy. The dissemination activities of the POSTHCARD project aim to make the content and findings of the project known to both a scientific and a non-specialist audience in understandable language.
Session on business development
The goal of The AAL projects is introducing services or products based on the latest technologies into the silver market, even though not every project will reach the stage of commercialisation. Business Model Canvas (BMC) is the tool to be used for the business development of an AAL project.
Business strategy development is a critical part of the project. The development of a strong business model requires many iteration and tests to validate the assumptions.
One of the first actions to write this buca is to identify more clearly who the competitors on the market are, what their value proposition is, and etc. Our enduser is still not sufficiently defined, because every person that interacts with an Alzheimer patient can be considered as a potential end user.
Networking session
During the POSTHCARD team’s visit to Bucharest , a representative of the Politehnica University of Bucharest was invited to hold a networking session. Thanks to Beia Consult International CEO for being our business development adviser.
Conclusion
The meeting – workshop was a general success. We discussed most pressing issues and brainstormed on critical points in the development. Everyone is looking forward to the first version of the product, which will hopefully be released at the next meeting.
