気ままなリライト４６
With growing cases of age-related incurable impairments in sensory, motor or cognitive capabilities due to the disruption of the network in the brain called dementia, the government and municipalities are launching a cheerleading campaign to encourage more companies to tap the potential market of dementia-friendly products and services to improve the quality of dementia care. The campaign is designed to engage dementia-affected seniors in shaping and influencing the development of the products as a glimpse of how people with dementia interpret the world they see, hear and feel is more likely to inspire product designers co-creating with people living with dementia to reach something unthinkable or unimaginable through the senses of dementia-affected people in different stages of the disease.
As part of the nation-wide campaign let by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to expand companies’ efforts to improve the quality of products and services friendly to dementia-affected people through the experience of seniors living with dementia, a brainstorming session held in June organized by Kyoto Prefecture, with dementia-affected seniors as the participants, has got a start-up to put in participants’ shoes to launch the service in favor of dementia-affected shoppers. The start-up called KAERU in Chuo Ward, Tokyo offering a smartphone app-based transaction service received feedback from dementia-affected smartphone users to pursue their happier shopping experiences through a pre-paid card linked to a smartphone app in the session. The pre-paid card is designed to make up for their reducing cognitive ability. The location of the card is detected through the app when the cared is lost. The shopping list pops up on the screen of the smartphone when the shopper comes close to the supermarket as a destination. Charging the card with cash or setting a withdrawal limit is done through the app by the smartphone user or the user’s family members.
The participation of dementia-affected seniors in a brainstorming session has been encouraged for a company to make a breakthrough in the development of dementia-friendly products and in the improvement of dementia-friendly services. Nearly 100 seniors living with dementia joined the sessions four companies held on a trial basis so far. In Kyoto Prefecture, a reward was offered to 20 seniors with dementia for the participation. Among the reward recipients was 56-year-old Tokuko Tashiro with a diagnosis of dementia in 2019. She said, “Sharing my experience with project managers is a big deal for me. The connectedness to the world where I live in makes me feel alive.”
Lion Corporation, a major healthcare commodity maker is researching dementia-friendly products and services for oral care by targeting elderly day-care service recipients with or without dementia. By exploring what a product or a service feels like for each elderly person with dementia, Lion is aiming to give meaning, comfort and safety to everyday life with various challenges each person with dementia is faced with, through individualized oral care according to each stage of the disease. They are pursuing more individually-tailored services and products available and accessible to elderly persons with dementia who have difficulty getting used to unfamiliar objects and routines, who gradually dive into a cavity of oblivion, only depending on their senses, and who find it hard to make sense of what they are doing with toothbrushes.