Congratulations to Dr.Norman Alm - Enterprise Fellowship Award.
Posted: 10/06/2009
Dr Norman Alm, a Senior Lecturer in the School, has just been awarded a Scottish Enterprise / Royal Society of Edinburgh Enterprise Fellowship. This will pay him a full-time salary plus expenses for one year from October 2009, in order to concentrate on bringing to the market the CIRCA system, which supports the communication of older people with dementia. CIRCA is one of the results of a ten-year ongoing collaboration between Norman, Dr Arlene Astell of the School of Psychology at the University of St Andrews, and Gary Gowans of the School of Design at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee.
“This Fellowship comes at just the right time”, said Norman. “We know that carers of people with dementia, throughout CIRCA’s development, have been very keen to be able to make use of it, and the Fellowship will give me a chance to talk to potential customers, possible investors, get the system ready as a product for the market, and improve our business plan. In addition I will have the opportunity to extend my skills in workshops about marketing, sales, and running a business, and have the backup of mentoring from experienced business people.”
CIRCA is a unique and provably successful support system to enable a person with dementia to regain to some extent the ability to have conversation again. It works by presenting the user with a touchscreen accessible multimedia display of material from the past : photos, music and video clips. This enables a conversation with a relative or carer by prompting and supporting the long term memory of the person with dementia, which can often be relatively intact, despite their impaired working (short-term) memory. CIRCA has been proven to work in controlled trials, and has been developed from the beginning in partnership with people who have dementia and their family and carers.
Other info about CIRCA can be found at :
www.computing.dundee.ac.uk/projects/circa
www.livinginthemoment.co.uk