Telehomecare is one of the technological solutions used by older persons to remain living at home in their own community. A selection of 85 Dutch telehomecare projects was examined in terms of the barriers to their implementation. Three categories of telehomecare technologies were distinguished: (i) remote telecare, (ii) activity monitoring, and (iii) a category comprising telemedicine and e-health solutions and services. There are numerous barriers to the implementation of telehomecare technologies. In the majority of the Dutch telehomecare projects, the needs of both care recipients and family carers are addressed. The integration of needs derived from one's health condition and the requirements set to technology are not always a match. Some projects give consideration to how to get commitment of the care professionals and their managers. Only a few projects consider economic aspects, for instance by the development of a social business case. To lift the barriers to the implementation of telehomecare, a better exchange of knowledge and experiences related to functionalities and user needs, the use of home modifications and assistive technologies, as well as the available care support should be considered.
Purpose eHealth projects in the Netherlands have various backgrounds. First, the number of persons aged 65 and over will have increased by 400,000 between 2008 and 20131. Over the same period, the potential workforce will have decreased from 4.2 persons at present to 3.6 persons for each 65 plus. Second, there is a shift from institutional care to care provided at home. The Dutch government promotes healthy behaviour and emphasises the importance of disease prevention2. People prefer to continue living in the community, even when their health is declining. Finally, Dutch policies stimulate the use of e-health in order to (i) support ageing-in-place (AiP), (ii) to enhance the quality of life of older adults, and (iii) to reduce the workload of professional carers. Method Vilans’ Centre of Excellence for Long-Term Care3 database of 85 projects was analyzed. The projects included in the database date from 2004 and after. Some of these projects have been completed and terminated; other projects are still ongoing. Although the database includes the majority of the projects, a complete coverage of all projects in The Netherlands is not guaranteed. To analyse the barriers, all projects were sorted according to one type of e-Health project (videoconferencing, activity monitoring, other types). In this study, basic, functional and economic values from the Model of Integrated Building Design4 were considered as relevant stakeholder values deemed necessary for a successful implementation. Results & Discussion Most projects in the database use e-Health for the support of older adults with (48 projects) or without (35 projects) care needs. In addition, dementia (19 projects), COPD and diabetes (both 11 projects) are the three health conditions that e-Health applications are most often used for. A major barrier for implementation is that only 11 out the 85 projects have a social business case. Another barrier is that requirements to building construction, building systems, e-Health applications or (building) services are hardly ever considered in the projects that also aim to support ageing-in-place. There are many stakeholders involved in the e-Health projects, and not all of the needs of these stakeholders are met in the design and implementation of the accompanying technologies. The execution of these projects seems to consist merely of an analysis of the technological applications with emphasis on the needs of the care recipient and other primary users. To date, e-Health projects in The Netherlands have not been fully implemented5. As well as a failure to include stakeholder needs and accounting for potential barriers, another reason may be that use of e-Health in care will imply innovating care protocols. Care provision shifting from a medical disease oriented model towards a care and wellbeing model. A structural exchange of knowledge and experience in functionalities and user needs will be necessary to take away barriers to a large-scale and successful implementation of e-Health in The Netherlands.
Students in Higher Music Education (HME) are not facilitated to develop both their artistic and academic musical competences. Conservatoires (professional education, or ‘HBO’) traditionally foster the development of musical craftsmanship, while university musicology departments (academic education, or ‘WO’) promote broader perspectives on music’s place in society. All the while, music professionals are increasingly required to combine musical and scholarly knowledge. Indeed, musicianship is more than performance, and musicology more than reflection—a robust musical practice requires people who are versed in both domains. It’s time our education mirrors this blended profession. This proposal entails collaborative projects between a conservatory and a university in two cities where musical performance and musicology equally thrive: Amsterdam (Conservatory and University of Amsterdam) and Utrecht (HKU Utrechts Conservatorium and Utrecht University). Each project will pilot a joint program of study, combining existing modules with newly developed ones. The feasibility of joint degrees will be explored: a combined bachelor’s degree in Amsterdam; and a combined master’s degree in Utrecht. The full innovation process will be translated to a transferable infrastructural model. For 125 students it will fuse praxis-based musical knowledge and skills, practice-led research and academic training. Beyond this, the partners will also use the Comenius funds as a springboard for collaboration between the two cities to enrich their respective BA and MA programs. In the end, the programme will diversify the educational possibilities for students of music in the Netherlands, and thereby increase their professional opportunities in today’s job market.
In the Netherlands approximately 2 million inhabitants have one or more disabilities. However, just like most people they like to travel and go on holiday.In this project we have explored the customer journey of people with disabilities and their families to understand their challenges and solutions (in preparing) to travel. To get an understanding what ‘all-inclusive’ tourism would mean, this included an analysis of information needs and booking behavior; traveling by train, airplane, boat or car; organizing medical care and; the design of hotels and other accommodations. The outcomes were presented to members of ANVR and NBAV to help them design tourism and hospitality experiences or all.
Denim Democracy from the Alliance for Responsible Denim (ARD) is an interactive exhibition that celebrates the journey and learning of ARD members, educates visitors about sustainable denim and highlights how companies collaborate together to achieve results. Through sight, sound and tactile sensations, the visitor experiences and fully engages sustainable denim production. The exhibition launches in October 2018 in Amsterdam and travels to key venues and locations in the Netherlands until April 2019. As consumers, we love denim but the denim industry, like other sub-sectors in the textile, apparel and footwear industries, faces many complex sustainability challenges and has been criticized for its polluting and hazardous production practices. The Alliance for Responsible Denim project brought leading denim brands, suppliers and stakeholders together to collectively address these issues and take initial steps towards improving the ecological sustainability impact of denim production. Sustainability challenges are considered very complex and economically undesirable for individual companies to address alone. In denim, small and medium sized denim firms face specific challenges, such as lower economies of scale and lower buying power to affect change in practices. There is great benefit in combining denim companies' resources and knowledge so that collective experimentation and learning can lift the sustainability standards of the industry and lead to the development of common standards and benchmarks on a scale that matters. If meaningful, transformative industrial change is to be made, then it calls for collaboration between denim industry stakeholders that goes beyond supplier-buyer relations and includes horizontal value chain collaboration of competing large and small denim brands. However collaboration between organizations, and especially between competitors, is highly complex and prone to failure. The research behind the Alliance for Responsible Denim project asked a central research question: how do competitors effectively collaborate together to create common, industry standards on resource use and benchmarks for improved ecological sustainability? To answer this question, we used a mixed-method, action research approach. The Alliance for Responsible Denim project mobilized and facilitated denim brands to collectively identify ways to reduce the use of water and chemicals in denim production and then aided them to implement these practices individually in their respective firms.
