Title: Digital creativity in dementia care support

Authors: Konstantinos Zachos; Neil Maiden; Kristine Pitts; Sara Jones; Ian Turner; Malcolm Rose; Kevin Pudney; Julie MacManus

Addresses: Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice, City University London, Northampton Square, London, EC1V 0HB, UK ' Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice, City University London, Northampton Square, London, EC1V 0HB, UK ' Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice, City University London, Northampton Square, London, EC1V 0HB, UK ' Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice, City University London, Northampton Square, London, EC1V 0HB, UK ' Registered Nursing Home Association, Birmingham B30 3JN, UK ' Registered Nursing Home Association, Birmingham B30 3JN, UK ' Registered Nursing Home Association, Birmingham B30 3JN, UK ' MediaTel Ltd., London W1B 5AJ, UK

Abstract: This paper reports the application of digital creativity to the care for people with dementia. A digital app was developed for use by staff in residential homes caring for people with dementia. The app invokes a set of computational services to undertake creative work, the results of which are presented to encourage and support cognitive creativity by care staff. The services undertake computational work such as retrieving resolutions to care problems encountered previously, matching care situations to situations in analogical domains such as parenting, teaching and prison life, and automatically generating customised creativity prompts. The app was designed so that care staff can generate contributions to resident care plans that are novel and hence individualised to the resident as part of a shift towards more person-centred care.

Keywords: digital creativity; case-based reasoning; CBR; analogical reasoning; dementia care; mobile computing; digital apps; residential homes; cognitive creativity; care staff; resident care plans; individualisation; person-centred care.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCRC.2013.056924

International Journal of Creative Computing, 2013 Vol.1 No.1, pp.35 - 56

Published online: 31 Jul 2014 *