Apps for Dementia
Type: Video 32 mins
The benefits and use of apps for people living with dementia
Dementia progressively challenges a person’s abilities to independently access and engage in activities they find meaningful, interesting and continuous with their life story. Carers become increasingly figural in enabling this engagement. But barriers like lack of funding, carer time and resources mean that opportunities for engagement are often limited, and disengagement commonly results. Touchscreen tablets are an increasingly affordable, accessible, widely socially acceptable and intuitive technology that can overcome some of these barriers. The plethora of apps available for tablets, allows enormous scope for individually tailoring or customising engagement to utilise the person’s abilities, tap into their interests, cultural background and past experiences, and connect them with others.
This presentation investigates:
- The benefits of touchscreen tablets and apps for people with dementia and their carers.
- How to select apps that are tailored to the person’s interests, background and abilities.
- Providing practical strategies for utilising apps to enable the engagement of people with dementia and facilitate social connections.
PRESENTER
Alissa Westphal
Alissa Westphal is a lecturer in dementia care at the Academic Unit for Psychiatry of Old Age, University of Melbourne.Her interests are Dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, education, meaningful engagement, technology and the behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia. A collaborative project that Alissa has been involved, led by the Melbourne Health Aged Persons Mental Health Occupational Therapists was nominated for a Melbourne Health Celebrating Excellence Award in October 2017 which recognised their work with touchscreen technology in Residential Aged Care Facilities. Alissa and her colleague Dr Samantha Loi have recently published a paper on staff perceptions on the use of touchscreen technology with those living in residential aged care.
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LEARNING OUTCOMES
On watching this webinar viewers will have gained:
- Awareness of the benefits of touchscreen tablets and apps for people with dementia and their carers
- Know how to select apps that are tailored to the person’s interests, background and abilities
- Strategies for utilising apps to enable the engagement of people with dementia and facilitate social connections.
Presentation Video File size: 96MB
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