Story of an R&D Project That Became a Smart Solution for People with Memory Disorders: Demwatch

Some projects are good for technological development, and some technological development is good for people, directly. Well, Demwatch is one of those projects. Let’s go back in time to the year 2008 when we started developing R&D projects as an international consortium. First four years, negative. However, in 2012, two of our projects got admitted; one of them being Demwatch with eight partners, from two different countries (Turkey and France).

Demwatch is a project that was completed in August 2016 with the main objective of creating a smartwatch for people with memory disorders to make life easier for them. Since there is a great need for solutions to assist the care by supporting early diagnosis, prolonging independent living, monitoring for safety, and supporting memory functions, Demwatch was designed to help by creating assistive indoor and outdoor technology to support everyday life and thus boost dependent living and inclusion. The target user group other than the patients are their family carers, formal caregivers, members of rehabilitation staff, and clinicians.

Little did we know that this project would become a strong reinforcement for our mobile device management solution: MobiVisor. Let me take you through the steps that led Demwatch to become an MDM tool.

When the project started, our role here was to develop the required software. The watch needed to understand when a person falls down to alert the caregivers, thus, we needed to be able to measure the acceleration of the body. However, the arm is not the right place to do that because it is a limb that is very mobile, and away from the center of mass of the body. For example, false data was given when the person clapped.

So, a smartwatch put on the arm was not the right solution. The device needs to be as close as possible to the center of mass, which is the stomach when it comes to the human body. Thus, we decided that it must be a belt buckle rather than a watch. That way, it is impossible to get a false fall-down alert unless the person jumps over the bed intentionally.

Turkcell, from the Turkish consortium, made a belt buckle device while CEA (Centre Energie Atomique), from the French consortium, made an apparatus which was like hanging your phone to your belt. We decided to create software that would work with both.

Well yes, the project was based on hardware and the sensors in the devices did not exist in mobile phones at the time. However, we were able to predict that they were going to be integrated into mobile phones in the future. Then, we would be able to use mobile phones as tracking devices for people with memory disorders.

We decided to create something that would use the sensor data if there were sensors, but if not, let there be a simulator to substitute so that mobile phones could be used instead of the belt buckle as they technically progress over time.

This was a development with positive results!

Safe zones were defined, memory games were integrated. As well, we were getting alerts when the person stayed in a certain area for too long.

Even though these were great achievements and we had really great partners, we could not find a financial business model that would fit both parties. However, we thought it would be really good to use the idea to support our mobile device management system; MobiVisor. So, Demwatch became a project that reinforced another smart solution of ours which we started using with an elderly care facility; Diakone.

Were we able to get the benefit we thought we would? No. Because some partners gave up, and as I mentioned before, we couldn’t find a model which worked for everyone. However, we benefited from this project a lot. We gained much more than we invested. But, the biggest benefit was not financial.

We worked with many valuable partners, we learned the system in both Turkey and France, we had the opportunity to perform research with CEA, our product was reinforced, and much more.

Most importantly, we gained a broader understanding.

So now, with our stronger ideas and broader points of view, we are using MobiVisor not only as an enterprise mobility management tool but also as a smart solution that will serve people with memory disorders, and their caregivers.

If you are in such a need to provide smart solutions for your elderly care facility, or you have any questions, please feel free to contact us and our team will be more than happy to help you. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Take care of yourself and stay healthy.

About Özer Aydemir

Computer engineer since 2002 and entrepreneur since 2007. CEO and Co-Founder of IOTIQ GmbH. Project leader for Eureka projects Insist, and I-DELTA; project member of BaaS, Demwatch, Insist, Mos2s, SecureGrid, Optimum, Pianism, I2Panema, Machinaide, and hopefully many others in the future.