On 12th and 13th of February, Lene Lunde and Astri Letnes Janson from the University of Oslo attended the eHealthconference of the Norwegian Nurses Organisation (NSF), held in Oslo. They attended with a poster presenting the process of creating content for the SUCCESS app, through user-centered design involving caregivers of people with dementia, combined with research findings. The poster is in Norwegian, entitled “Using an Avatar to Bridge the Gap: From Research Findings to Caregiver Support”. The jury awarded the poster, emphasizing the actuality and importance of informal caregiver support. In addition, they underlined the project’s novelty and innovativeness.

On 23 January 2020 20 experts and user representatives joined the final meeting of the SUCCESS user advisory board in Vienna. After a presentation of the final prototype of the SUCCESS app, participants were provided with an insight on the preliminary results of the 6-month field study with 30 Austrian and 30 Romanian users. Further, an overview on the current plans for the market introduction of the SUCCESS solution was given.
Discussions then focused on enablers and barriers for introducing SUCCESS to care ecosystems and ideas for additional target groups that would also benefit from an information and training offer such as SUCCESS. In the interest of informal caregivers, experts encouraged the project team to seek for a prompt introduction of SUCCESS together with partners from the social and public sectors.

The 23rd Congress of the World Association of Social Psychiatry took place in Bucharest, Romania, between 25 - 28.10.2019. It was a great occasion to have the SUCCESS project presented – by our colleagues from RAS – to a large number of mental health professionals from all over the world. We received encouraging feedback in the terms of the perceived need of the SUCCESS app. The presented paper has also been published in the conference proceedings.

On 17 - 18 October 2019 the SUCCESS consortium met in Cyprus to discuss first results from the ongoing field trials in Austria and Romania and to develop a roadmap for the development of the final system prototype and the subsequent activities towards making SUCCESS a product available for informal caregivers of persons with dementia and social services providers.

From 23 - 25 September 2019 consortium members of the SUCCESS project joined the AAL Forum in the beautiful Danish city of Aarhus to present their current prototype to the European AAL community. Besides feedback on the solution approach of SUCCESS, many discussions centered around potential strategies on how to introduce SUCCESS as a product to European care environments. Social services providers confirmed their role as potential multipliers for SUCCESS. In addition to existing on-site training offers and self-help groups, an app-based information and training offer could help to increase the number of care persons that benefit from professional guidance and training on communication and interaction with persons with dementia.

At the closing event of the project "Dementia in Motion" (22 November 2018, Vienna), which explored mobility requirements of people with early stages of dementia, patients, relatives, caregivers and representatives of self-help groups came together to discuss this topic. In addition to the presentation and discussions of project results, a marketplace entitled "Getting to know different perspectives" was also offered. EURAG Austria was invited to be part of the marketplace and to introduce the SUCCESS app to the 140 participants of the event. The prototype could be tested by interested persons and received positive feedback for its ease-of-use and the low barrier to start using the system.

The annual AAL Forum is the largest European networking event that provides a platform for discussing innovative technological products and services for active and healthy ageing. This year the AAL community assembled on 24-26 September in the city of Bilbao, Spain to present the latest developments and to discuss future ideas and strategies for the market adoption of AAL solutions.
Within the event, the project consortium presented the current prototype of the SUCCESS app as well as findings from the 1st field trial. Feedback from the visitors confirmed the need for innovative training offers to improve the communication with persons with dementia in various contexts, e.g. to support service providers in dementia-friendly communities.
Co-located with the AAL Forum, a consortium meeting of the SUCCESS project was held to define a roadmap for the further development of the SUCCESS app based on the feedback from the 1st field trials and additional design workshops. In addition, the consortium reflected on the results of interviews with stakeholders that were performed in order to evaluate potential business models for the market launch of the SUCCESS app. Next steps towards the implementation of the most promising SUCCESS business model (targeting professional caregivers as multipliers) were defined.

The first field trials that took place for a duration of six weeks in Austria and Romania have been successfully finished. Overall there were 17 potential end users involved in both countries, including formal as well as informal caregivers.
In summary, all test users were satisfied with the idea and content of the app. The information provided by the app was perceived as useful. Articles such as "hiding and losing objects", videos that demonstrated concrete care situations, and the self-care content including guided meditation were named as favourite functions and are related to positive user experiences. The use of the SUCCESS app had different effects for formal and informal caregivers. Generally, informal caregivers reported that the app enabled them to find appropriate actions in critical situations. They also stated that they became more sensitive to the needs and signals of the person with dementia.
Apart from that, users would wish for additional content like a quiz for checking already existing knowledge, tips for memory training, and links to further private support (e.g., psychologists, if relatives feel overwhelmed). The feedback will guide the further development of the SUCCESS app. Second field trials are scheduled for the beginning of 2019, involving 120 participants in Austria and Romania.

Within the SUCCESS app, avatar-based trainings are used to share knowledge on communication and interaction strategies for caregivers of persons with dementia. Training lectures and interactive roleplays provide a flexible and well-accepted method for users to get guidance on how to properly interact with people with dementia as well as to receive emotional support.
Avatars have been successfully employed in several domains, including gaming, education, health and Active and Assisted Living (AAL). Avatars provide an intuitive and natural way for users to interact with intelligent systems that offer services of different kinds. Since emotions play a fundamental role in human communication, the affective capabilities an Avatar employs have a strong impact on the perception of its intelligence, quality of interaction, and more importantly, on user engagement.
Interested researchers working in this domain are invited to join the discussion on different aspects of the affective capabilities of avatars within the "2nd Workshop on Affective Interaction with Avatars and Robots" (organized in conjunction with AmI’18).

Persons with dementia are confronted with a progressive loss of memory, changes in their perception and behavior as well as problems in independently performing everyday tasks. The majority of persons with dementia are provided care in their own homes by family members or relatives that in many cases feel overburdened with their care responsibilities, leading to stress, feelings of helplessness, and even caregiver burnout.
In recent years, many national and European research projects have been launched, aiming at developing ICT-based solutions for persons with dementia or their caregivers. As part of the eHealth 2018 conference (8-9 May 2018, Schloss Schönbrunn, Vienna), possibilities of ICT-based systems to support persons with dementia and their caregivers in their daily lives were discussed within the workshop “What do information and communication technologies offer for people with dementia and their caregivers?”.
The SUCCESS project invited caregivers, representatives of care organizations and other people that are in contact with persons with dementia as well as developers to join the discussion. In addition to the ease of use of systems, the development of sustainable business models was identified as a major success factor for innovative solutions for persons with dementia. Thereby, multipliers such as professional caregivers or doctors who are in contact with persons affected and their caregivers play an important role. In addition, the costs of purchasing the solutions or the lack of public funding also represent an obstacle to the market success.

The GÖG (Gesundheit Österreich GmbH) - Austria's national Research and Planning-Centre for the health care system - organized a networking meeting covering the topic "Mobility and Dementia". The meeting took place on the 21st of July, 2017 in Vienna, hosted by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency and was framed by speakers from the Austrian Federal Ministry for health and Women's Affairs, the Austrian Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology as well as the Austrian Federal Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Consumer Protection. All of these units were and still are funding several projects and initiatives in the mentioned area up to now.
The main goal of the meeting was to interconnect different projects covering the topics dementia and mobility to find synergies and potential cooperations to streamline effort. One important cross-cutting initiative of different ministries to address the topic with several specific goals is the Austrian strategy for dementia (www.demenzstrategie.net).
exthex, Austrian SME partner in the SUCCESS project, participated at the meeting and demonstrated SUCCESS as the unique training platform for formal and informal carers as it is. On one hand important contacts for further dissemination and business development in the course of our project could be established and on the other hand a broader audience got to know SUCCESS and showed high interest in it.

The project's website is launched on the 30th of April 2017. The wesite will host all vital information about the project and much more...

The project's kick off meeting were held at Vienna (Austria) on the 6th and 7th of March 2017.