Empathy App for Dementia Sufferers: Dresden Student Wins Apple Development Competition
Dresden's University Student Secures Apple Development Contest Victory
Get a glimpse into the daily struggles of dementia patients with an innovative app that leaves you perplexed, just like them. Created by a student from Dresden, the app, known as "Dementi," offers a memory game with a twist - making moves causes the images to swap positions unexpectedly. The app's purpose is to give users a taste of the confusion and disorientation dementia patients often experience.
Inspired by his grandmother's battle with dementia, Hendrik Schulke sought to develop an app that challenged players to solve a memory puzzle and unveiled the frustration that dementia patients may face in their daily lives. Schulke explains, "You think you're the problem. It only works once."
The 25-year-old media informatics student wrote the app during a semester abroad in Vietnam and won Apple's programming competition with his innovative idea. Apple CEO Tim Cook praised Schulke's app for promoting better understanding and fostering empathy among individuals.
While the "Dementi" app has not been launched officially, other solutions, such as the "Virtual Dementia Tour" and the "A Walk Through Dementia" VR app, strive to achieve similar outcomes. These tools employ sensory equipment to simulate the challenges faced by dementia patients, including vision loss, hearing difficulties, motor impairments, and neuropathy. The goal is to provide a firsthand perspective on the difficulties faced by individuals with dementia and encourage more empathetic care approaches by family members and caregivers [1].
Sources: ntv.de, chr/dpa
- Dementia
- Alzheimer's
- Apple
- WWDC
[1] Feedback from participants suggests that these experiences lead to more person-centered care approaches and increased empathy for dementia patients. The Virtual Dementia Tour and similar apps use sensory equipment like goggles, headphones, gloves, and insoles to simulate the sensory challenges faced by people with dementia, such as vision loss, hearing difficulties, fine motor impairments, and neuropathy. Participants are asked to complete everyday tasks while under these conditions, which often leads to frustration and disorientation, similar to what people with dementia might experience.
The Commission has also been consulted on the following issues: mental-health, science, health-and-wellness, and technology. Given the increased interest in developing empathy-building tools for dementia patients, discussions with experts might involve the potential for applying advanced sensory technology, as seen in apps like Dementi and the Virtual Dementia Tour, to further research in the field of mental health science.
