Björn W. Schuller received his diploma, doctoral degree, habilitation, and Adjunct Teaching Professor in Machine Intelligence and Signal Processing all in EE/IT from TUM in Munich/Germany. He is Full Professor of Artificial Intelligence and the Head of GLAM at Imperial College London/UK, Full Professor and Chair of Embedded Intelligence for Health Care and Wellbeing at the University of Augsburg/Germany, co-founding CEO and current CSO of audEERING – an Audio Intelligence company based near Munich and in Berlin/Germany, and permanent Visiting Professor at HIT/China amongst other Professorships and Affiliations. Previous stays include Full Professor at the University of Passau/Germany, and Researcher at Joanneum Research in Graz/Austria, and the CNRS-LIMSI in Orsay/France. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and Golden Core Awardee of the IEEE Computer Society, Fellow of the ISCA, President-Emeritus of the AAAC, and Senior Member of the ACM. He (co-)authored 900+ publications (30k+ citations, h-index=83), is Field Chief Editor of Frontiers in Digital Health and was Editor in Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing amongst manifold further commitments and service to the community. His 30+ awards include having been honoured as one of 40 extraordinary scientists under the age of 40 by the WEF in 2015. He served as Coordinator/PI in 15+ European Projects, is an ERC Starting Grantee, and consultant of companies such as Barclays, GN, Huawei, or Samsung.

Contac: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B6rn_Schuller

ABSTRACT:

Ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse communities have different views of dementia as well as different barriers to care and information.  This can impact disease identification, diagnosis, and post-diagnostic care and support.  Low literacy and low health literacy leaves many individuals unable to comprehend and act on health-related information.  When individuals are affected by dementia and family caregivers are under stress, plain language materials can help them absorb information more easily, improving their ability to manage challenging caregiver situations and dementia-related behavioral symptoms.

BIO:

Jennifer Schlesinger, MPH, CHES, is the Associate Vice President of Healthcare Services and Community Education at Alzheimer’s Los Angeles.  She oversees technical assistance to healthcare systems to improve their dementia capability, professional training, outreach to healthcare professionals, and community education programs.  Ms. Schlesinger oversees multiple nationally-recognized and award-winning projects including the Dementia Cal MediConnect Project, a project transforming healthcare in the State of California for low-income older adults with dementia, and ALZ Direct Connect®, a program which connects families dealing with dementia to Alzheimer’s Los Angeles.  Ms. Schlesinger has spoken locally, nationally, and internationally on diversity and dementia; plain language tools for dementia care; and improving care management to meet the needs of families affected by dementia.

CONTACT

Jennifer Schlesinger, MPH, CHES

Associate VP, Healthcare Services & Community Education

Preferred pronouns: she/her/hers
Alzheimer’s Los Angeles

jschlesinger@alzla.org

ABSTRACT:

The COVID-19 restrictions affect daily living in Norway, including home-dwelling people with dementia, and researchers conducting clinical trials in dementia. My talk will 1) describe the development of a pandemic cohort (PAN.DEM) incorporated in the LIVE@Home.Path, an ongoing clinical intervention trial on resource utilization including home-dwelling people with dementia and their caregivers (N=438 dyads) and 2) describe pre-pandemic use of assistive technology and explore to which extent COVID-19 restrictions increase caregivers interest in innovation in the PAN.DEM cohort (N=126). Our main finding is that assistive technology is in regular use among 75% pre-pandemic, the vast majority utilized traditional stove guards and safety alarms, only few operate sensor technology, including GPS, fall detectors or communication aids. In response to COVID-19, 17% show increased interest in technology; the ability to operate a telephone and higher cognitive functioning are associated with increased interest. We conclude that wearable and sensing technology is not yet established among people with dementia in Norway, and few caregivers consider increased interest under the restrictions. Complying with the process evaluation of complex interventions has provided valuable information on how the unexpected intervention in terms of pandemic restrictions affects everyday life of home-dwelling people with dementia and their caregivers.  

BIO:

Bettina S. Husebø is professor at the University of Bergen (UoB), Department of Public health and Primary Care (IGS), leader for innovation at IGS, and head of the Centre for Elderly and Nursing Home Medicine (SEFAS). Additionally, she has an employment at the Municipality of Bergen. Husebø is also related to the centre of excellence Neuro-SysMed by the innovation part of the LIVE@Home.Path trial for home-dwelling people with dementia, and member of the group for Artificial Intelligence (AI) at UoB. These positions are of key importance, since the area of elderly and dementia care experiences a paradigm change against innovation, technology and AI. Her clinical research is at the level between technology and innovation, epidemiologic, psychometric properties, and complex intervention studies (RCTs). She is part of three COST-Actions: a) TD1005 Pain in People with Dementia (PWD); b) CA19132 Advance Best practices & technoLogy on medication adherencE” (ENABLE); c) CA19136 Health and Wellbeing in an Age-friendly Digital World (NET4AGE-FRIENDLY). Husebø developed, tested, and used the MOBID-2 Pain Scale, an international recognized pain assessment tool for PWD. Ground-breaking results by the Pain-BPSD Trial demonstrated that individual treatment of pain significantly improved dementia related neuropsychiatric symptoms like agitation and depression published in BMJ and Nature Neurol. >80 relevant publications registered in Google Scholar. Google Scholar registration: H-index 28, 3293 citations; i-10index: 58; Media release/podcast; TV/radio about 70 contributions in 2019 e.g., The Guardian; 513 times mentions on Twitter, 12 Blog mentions. Several articles were referred to the Policy documents, such as “Prospective multicenter cross-sectional audit among older Australians accessing health and residential care services: Protocol for a national advance care directive prevalence study”; https://apo.org.au/node/267811, and are cited by Association of the Scientific Medical Societies in Germany.

CONTACT:

https://www.uib.no/en/persons/Bettina.Huseb%C3%B8

Bettina.Husebo@uib.no

+47 48094660