On Wednesday, April 14, the first participatory design meeting was held with the SoCaTel digital co-creation platform as part of the activities of the Specialized Center for Dementia of ISRAA (https://www.israa.it/servizi-territoriali/la-rete-alzheimer/c-s-d).
The professionals of the CSD team met online with ISRAA social workers and some family members to start a shared planning in order to shape a "digital support" directed to informal caregivers of people with dementia.
ISRAA has always been committed to developing and offering services to meet and respond to the needs of citizens. The SoCaTel platform, adopted by ISRAA in the context of the Digital Twinning program promoted by Digital Health Europe (https://digitalhealtheurope.eu/twinnings/dhe-twinning-results/socatel-co-creation-platform/) was created with the intention of connecting patients, family members and health professionals to create solutions of real utility starting from a sharing of desires, needs and skills and through the shared design of responses. For this reason it was decided to put it to the test in the field and evaluate its potential.
The goal is to create a platform where family members can find content and information to better live their daily lives with their loved ones and useful for professionals to enhance and put their knowledge at the service of families.
What kind of guidance and information would family members like to find on this webpage? What can they teach from their daily experience? And what contribution can professionals make based on their own expertise?
These are some of the themes that have been discussed. Participants have confronted each other, shared their experiences, brought suggestions and ideas and started to evaluate the pros and cons of the main proposals that emerged. The comparison will continue in the coming days: it is in fact possible to access the platform independently at any time to make further contributions and view the comments and reflections published by others. This is an important strength of the tool, designed to allow continuous interaction and therefore adaptable to the times and habits of everyone's life.
A second meeting will be held on April 20 that will take the process deeper. In fact, the opinions of the participants will be collected on some specific elements useful to structure a first prototype proposal.
Stay tuned for updates and news!