Co-Chairs of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Dementia, Debbie Abrahams MP and Baroness Browning, visited the UK DRI’s Centre for Care Research and Technology at Imperial College London yesterday, along with Vice-Chair Lord Weir of Ballyholme.
The Centre houses a diverse team of doctors, engineers and scientists collaborating to harness advances in artificial intelligence, engineering, robotics and sleep science to build the Minder platform, which delivers the highest quality dementia care in the home.
Minder uses an array of sensors and artificial intelligence to enable people with dementia to live safely and independently in their own homes, and prevent avoidable hospitalisations for reasons such as falls or urinary tract infections. 1 in 4 NHS hospital beds are occupied by people with dementia, many of those for preventable reasons.
Baroness Browning, Co-Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Dementia, said:
“The UK DRI Centre for Care Research and Technology is doing groundbreaking work here which could revolutionise the way that we care for people with dementia. Using Minder to enable people to live in their own homes could both reduce pressures on the health and social care systems, but also provide person-centred care where people with dementia can live their lives in the way that they prefer. Minder could play a pivotal role in delivering the person-centred care imagined by the Government’s 2021 Social Care White Paper.”
Prof David Sharp, Centre Director of the UK DRI Centre for Care Research & Technology, said:
“The APPG on Dementia does brilliant work to support the research community, as well as people living with the condition. At the UK Dementia Research Institute, our primary focus is to make a real difference to people with dementia, whether that’s by harnessing advances in AI to help people live safely at home, or studying the biological processes of dementia to uncover new ways to treat it. At this Centre we’re developing a completely new model for delivering high-quality social care in the home. That’s exciting scientifically, but people living with dementia are at the very heart of it.”
Article published: 5 July 2023