Pilot activities in Schiedam, Netherlands
Start date: February 2020
End date: June 2020
Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, pilot site activities have been seriously slowed down: installations and face-to-face support were affected during the lockdown phase. Nevertheless, the NESTORE users benefitted from the remote support of the NESTORE team and the visit restrictions allowed a more extensive pre-testing of the system in labs, at all benefit for the final testers.
Location: Schiedam, Netherlands
Pilot organiser: Preventie Collectief (www.preventie-collectief.nl)
Contact person: Canan Ziylan via email or phone (+31 10 794 68 78).
Preventie Collectief in Rotterdam is involved in the development of a community of seniors in Schiedam, a city near Rotterdam. They work together with two local senior organizations: Seniorenwelzijn and SooS Blauwhuis. These organizations will help recruiting seniors once the medical research ethics committee approves the pilot protocol. These senior organizations will send the invitations to participate in our pilot to their existing client base, both on paper and digital. They will also put the invitations on their meeting centers, in which the measurements during the pilot will take place. Basically, we will make use of existing social communities and their infrastructures to recruit participants. This approach proved effective during the preparatory co-design sessions at the start of the project.
Before the pilot, Preventie Collectief ran co-design activities
Users’ activities started in the Netherlands in February 2018. Preventie Collectief facilitated four activities in which 31 participants got involved to share their views, preferences and needs regarding the use of technologies in daily life (using the ‘Exhibition in a Box’ methodology). They also organised 3 co-design activities to collect opinions and experiences on prototype use in order to improve the NESTORE system. In concrete, Dutch users were recruited to test the app and chatbot, the tangible coach and to prioritize coaching activities.
Read more about the co-design activities in NESTORE
Preparation of the pilot study
NESTORE is getting famous in Schiedam! With the help of local television and radio stations, more senior citizens of Schiedam are getting familiar with NESTORE and the opportunity to participate in this European study. Preventie Collectief member Ton Mosheuvel explained about the upcoming pilot study here and here
The interviews took place in the senior meeting center SooS Blauwhuis, where the pilot activities will be held once the study starts.
People are excited to start testing the devices and sharing their experiences with it. Of course, the pandemic is making things more difficult than was ever imagined, but the study will continue while adhering to the regulations. Stay tuned!
During the pilot study
In September 2020, the baseline assessments of the participants officially started! Participants are very happy to be contributing to scientific work while at the same time enjoying being distracted from the pandemic.
Euronews came to visit Schiedam during our assessments with a participant, again visiting SooS Blauwhuis to show our area of interest.
More on this report can be found here and here.
Participants were eager to meet each other as the NESTORE cohort and share their experiences each other, but unfortunately the Covid-19 regulations leave no room for such activities.
Still, we’re trying to make it a pleasant time in which they can share their experiences with the researchers.
Finally, in January 2021, the final assessments were done, after which the participants had to say farewell to NESTORE. We still aim to have a physical meeting and final event with all our participants at SooS Blauwhuis. Once the regulations allow that to happen, we’ll be sure to invite local television and radio stations to join our closing ceremony and say goodbye… until another adventure!