BLOG – INTERDEM Present at Second INDUCT School

Last week, the participants of the INDUCT (Interdisciplinary Network for Dementia using Current Technology) project attended to the Second INDUCT School that took place in Salamanca (Spain) organized by IDES/INTRAS, CREA, the University of Salamanca, and the support of INTERDEM and INTERDEM Academy Networks. Early Stage Researchers, Supervisors and second level partners had the opportunity to bring together their expertise, discuss current developments and future plans and attained insight into new advances and perspectives on technologies for dementia care.

During the first two days, the school took place in the CREA (Spanish Centre of reference in Alzheimer), CREA is the most advance Alzheimer research centre in Spain and it is the cornerstone of dementia’s intervention research, the first step before an innovative intervention could be widespread to the clinical settings. CREA also offers a temporally accommodation for people with dementia alongside his three residential modules. These days served not only to learn about CREA’ facilities but also to prepare the next steps to be taken within the INDUCT project, building new opportunities of collaborations between ESRs, and involved EWGPWD members in the research projects.

On Wednesday, the team moved to Zamora to visit the facilities of INTRAS foundation. INTRAS foundation has worked effectively in several European projects developing and using technology as a facilitator in older adults with and without dementia daily live activities. The participants of the school could try in situ all the technologies currently used in the INTRAS Memory Clinic, learning about the implementation of technology in a community where the aged ratio is one of the highest around Europe, especially in the rural areas.

On Thursday and Friday, The Symposium of new technologies in dementia care organized by the University of Salamanca was a great opportunity to learn about the newest advances and perspectives in dementia interventions and also to know the R+D building of the University of Salamanca, where a lot of PhD students and researchers are working to make possible the translation of the academic knowledge into the society.

Thank you to all the participants who made possible this very productive week to keep us learning and building networks to improve the dementia care from multi-professional perspective!

Ángel C. Pinto Bruno