Category: Health care

Last week members of the 4D team attended a lecture hosted by the University of Manchester looking at dementia, the search for a cure and best care practices.

Hosted by NHS England’s Dementia Director, Professor Alistair Burn, the panel of guests shared a huge amount of insight and knowledge.

Heledd haf Griffiths and Professor Nigel Hooper are two biologists researching the causes of dementia and shared much on what they’ve found so far and the next steps. Professor Hooper shared with us the rate at which dementia is growing and then looked at the biology behind the disease. Professor Hooper’s colleague Heledd shared her families journey with dementia which led to her becoming determined to help find a cure.

The next part of the lecture looked at dementia therapies and we heard from Jacqueline Kindell, a PhD student at UoM’s School of Psychological Sciences. Jacqueline’s work is focused on best care practices and how to help those people living with dementia. The emphasis here is on familiarity and creating environments that support and help nurture the patient.

Everyone in the team got a lot from attending the evening and it also reinforced many of the ideas we are trying to implement in our immersive spaces for people living with dementia; a person centred approach that looks to engage and inspire.

If you’d like to find out more about our immersive, multi-sensory approaches to dementia care then just get in touch. We’d love to tell you more.

You can also find out more about this event at the University of Manchester’s website.

Our recent project looking at the impact of immersive experiences on people with dementia has been a huge success and it’s an area we are continuing to research and explore.

The power of the spaces 4D have worked on is that you can create unique atmospheres and settings to inspire conversation and make care person centred for each individual. Come and read more over at our case study page.

Research into dementia treatment and prevention is a rapidly developing area and we’re going to use the 4D blog to cover interesting studies and the latest news.

First up is a piece of research from Kingston University looking at multi sensory spaces in dementia care.

This immediately jumped out at us as it has some similarities with our immersive experiences though there are key differences too.

“The project investigates the current design and application of Multi sensory environments including aesthetic qualities and functional parameters, within a care home context. Because little documented design guidance for MSEs for older people with dementia exists, the overall purpose of the research is to establish new knowledge from which coherent, user-centred design solutions can be developed. In this respect, the research outcomes will potentially contribute towards improved care services for those living with dementia”

Good design is key to any space but it’s also fascinating to see how it can impact positively on well being. The project’s research involved creating new sensory rooms for those people with dementia and seeing how the design of these spaces could make a difference. Explore the blog on the project here.

We’re looking forward to hearing more about the research in October as the University are holding an exhibition to mark the end of the first stage of the research. There will also be much discussion on designing spaces for people with dementia which we look forward to contributing to.