The main objective of this report is to analyse and inform about international labour mobility, particularly within Europe, from the perspective of the Dutch Health and Social Care Sector. The report starts by describing the introduction of a new care system in The Netherlands. The government does not participate directly in the actual provision of care. This is a task principally for private care suppliers. Furthermore, the legal position of the Health and Social Care professions, regulated through the Individual Health Care Professions Act, and questions like the international recognition of degrees and the evaluation of foreign diplomas are discussed. This is followed by a clarification of the Dutch education system, particularly, relating to the study of medicine, nursing education and social work education. Subsequently, some core data on the ageing Dutch population are presented. The grey pressure increases and this will have an impact on health spending, health support and the future labour market. Then what follows is a description of the development of employment in the Dutch Health and Social Care Sector, per branch as well as the professions that are engaged in it. The general picture, at this moment, is that the Health and Social Care labour market is reasonably in balance. This trend will continue in the near future; shortages are expected only in the long term. All research done on the subject indicates that international mobility of medical and social professionals is still low in the Netherlands. The question remains whether a more active recruitment policy would be a solution for the expected long term shortages. The report concludes with a look at recruitment policy and some of its developments at the global, national and local level.
Long-term care facilities are currently installing dynamic lighting systems with the aim to improve the well-being and behaviour of residents with dementia. The aim of this study was to investigate the implementation of dynamic lighting systems from the perspective of stakeholders and the performance of the technology. Therefore, a questionnaire survey was conducted with the management and care professionals of six care facilities. Moreover, light measurements were conducted in order to describe the exposure of residents to lighting. The results showed that the main reason for purchasing dynamic lighting systems lied in the assumption that the well-being and day/night rhythmicity of residents could be improved. The majority of care professionals were not aware of the reasons why dynamic lighting systems were installed. Despite positive subjective ratings of the dynamic lighting systems, no data were collected by the organizations to evaluate the effectiveness of the lighting. Although the care professionals stated that they did not see any large positive effects of the dynamic lighting systems on the residents and their own work situation, the majority appreciated the dynamic lighting systems more than the old situation. The light values measured in the care facilities did not exceed the minimum threshold values reported in the literature. Therefore, it seems illogical that the dynamic lighting systems installed in the researched care facilities will have any positive health effects.
Motor learning is particularly challenging in neurological rehabilitation: patients who suffer from neurological diseases experience both physical limitations and difficulties of cognition and communication that affect and/or complicate the motor learning process. Therapists (e.g.,, physiotherapists and occupational therapists) who work in neurorehabilitation are therefore continuously searching for the best way to facilitate patients during these intensive learning processes. To support therapists in the application of motor learning, a framework was developed, integrating knowledge from the literature and the opinions and experiences of international experts. This article presents the framework, illustrated by cases from daily practice. The framework may assist therapists working in neurorehabilitation in making choices, implementing motor learning in routine practice, and supporting communication of knowledge and experiences about motor learning with colleagues and students. The article discusses the framework and offers suggestions and conditions given for its use in daily practice.
-Chatbots are being used at an increasing rate, for instance, for simple Q&A conversations, flight reservations, online shopping and news aggregation. However, users expect to be served as effective and reliable as they were with human-based systems and are unforgiving once the system fails to understand them, engage them or show them human empathy. This problem is more prominent when the technology is used in domains such as health care, where empathy and the ability to give emotional support are most essential during interaction with the person. Empathy, however, is a unique human skill, and conversational agents such as chatbots cannot yet express empathy in nuanced ways to account for its complex nature and quality. This project focuses on designing emotionally supportive conversational agents within the mental health domain. We take a user-centered co-creation approach to focus on the mental health problems of sexual assault victims. This group is chosen specifically, because of the high rate of the sexual assault incidents and its lifetime destructive effects on the victim and the fact that although early intervention and treatment is necessary to prevent future mental health problems, these incidents largely go unreported due to the stigma attached to sexual assault. On the other hand, research shows that people feel more comfortable talking to chatbots about intimate topics since they feel no fear of judgment. We think an emotionally supportive and empathic chatbot specifically designed to encourage self-disclosure among sexual assault victims could help those who remain silent in fear of negative evaluation and empower them to process their experience better and take the necessary steps towards treatment early on.
Despite their various appealing features, drones also have some undesirable side-effects. One of them is the psychoacoustic effect that originates from their buzzing noise that causes significant noise pollutions. This has an effect on nature (animals run away) and on humans (noise nuisance and thus stress and health problems). In addition, these buzzing noises contribute to alerting criminals when low-flying drones are deployed for safety and security applications. Therefore, there is an urgent demand from SMEs for practical knowledge and technologies that make existing drones silent, which is the main focus of this project. This project contributes directly to the KET Digital Innovations\Robotics and multiple themes of the top sectors: Agriculture, Water and Food, Health & Care and Safety. The main objective of this project is: Investigate the desirability and possibilities of extremely silent drone technologies for agriculture, public space and safety This is an innovative project and there exist no such drone technology that attempts to reduce the noises coming from drones. The knowledge within this project will be converted into the first proof-of-concepts that makes the technology the first Minimum Viable Product suitable for market evaluations. The partners of this project include WhisperUAV, which has designed the first concept of a silent drone. As a fiber-reinforced 3D composite component printer, Fiberneering plays a crucial role in the (further) development of silent drone technologies into testable prototypes. Sorama is involved as an expert company in the context of mapping the sound fields in and around drones. The University of Twente is involved as a consultant and co-developer, and Research group of mechatronics at Saxion is involved as concept developer, system and user requirement verifier and validator. As an unmanned systems innovation cluster, Space53 will be involved as innovation and networking consultant.
CRISPR/Cas genome engineering unleashed a scientific revolution, but entails socio-ethical dilemmas as genetic changes might affect evolution and objections exist against genetically modified organisms. CRISPR-mediated epigenetic editing offers an alternative to reprogram gene functioning long-term, without changing the genetic sequence. Although preclinical studies indicate effective gene expression modulation, long-term effects are unpredictable. This limited understanding of epigenetics and transcription dynamics hampers straightforward applications and prevents full exploitation of epigenetic editing in biotechnological and health/medical applications.Epi-Guide-Edit will analyse existing and newly-generated screening data to predict long-term responsiveness to epigenetic editing (cancer cells, plant protoplasts). Robust rules to achieve long-term epigenetic reprogramming will be distilled based on i) responsiveness to various epigenetic effector domains targeting selected genes, ii) (epi)genetic/chromatin composition before/after editing, and iii) transcription dynamics. Sustained reprogramming will be examined in complex systems (2/3D fibroblast/immune/cancer co-cultures; tomato plants), providing insights for improving tumor/immune responses, skin care or crop breeding. The iterative optimisations of Epi-Guide-Edit rules to non-genetically reprogram eventually any gene of interest will enable exploitation of gene regulation in diverse biological models addressing major societal challenges.The optimally balanced consortium of (applied) universities, ethical and industrial experts facilitates timely socioeconomic impact. Specifically, the developed knowledge/tools will be shared with a wide-spectrum of students/teachers ensuring training of next-generation professionals. Epi-Guide-Edit will thus result in widely applicable effective epigenetic editing tools, whilst training next-generation scientists, and guiding public acceptance.
