Meet GES Delegate: Manouchehr Shamsrizi
Organization Name: RetroBrain R&D
Country of Origin: Germany
Organization Website: www.retrobrain.de
Brief Description of Organization: RetroBrain R&D is “a benchmark in the therapeutic gamification industry” (LIFT Basel 2015) and a spin-off of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, initially financed by the Ernst Schering Foundation and Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs. Our aim is to harness the power of gamification and gaming technology to give caregivers the tools to help ailing parents suffering with dementia, also supporting fall prevention and old-age depressions prevention. RetroBrain is a member of the European Commission’s “Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing” and partnered with players such as Ashoka, Caritas, Microsoft, SAP, Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Charité.
What inspired you to start this organization? Dementia does not distinguish between rich and poor, religious affiliations or your nationality. It is, though, “one of the most important issues we face as the population ages” (G8 dementia summit) resulting in “stigmatization, barriers to diagnosis and care, and impacting caregivers, families and societies physically, psychologically and economically” (WHO). Today, “an effective therapy for Alzheimer’s disease is perhaps the greatest unmet need facing modern medicine” and has to be “a priority for European science and society” (The Lancet). Against this background, I believe that one key question arises: when fighting dementia, what is the “lowest common denominator” with the greatest possible scope? I do believe the “Homo Ludens” is, and we have build RetroBrain R&D on this philosophy.
What is the next big step you hope to help your organization reach? We are currently finalising the specifications of a model evaluation project in cooperation with Germany’s largest healthcare insurance provider, BarmerGEK, (as the first healthcare-project ever) in accordance with the new “Act to Strengthen Health Promotion and Preventive Health Care”. This will allow us to leapfrog what we previously thought was a long-term goal: being covered by health insurance, and though optimizing our social impact. We will then start B2B-sales targeting retirement homes, which is why we have partnered with important players and co-developed our sales and marketing with them.
