Abstract:

This paper presents a solution developed in the context of Demola cocreation methodology (https://www.demola.net/) to minimize the feeling of loneliness of the elderly. All over the world there is a large number of elderly living alone. With the COVID-19 pandemic, day centres had to close their doors and therefore more elderly had to be isolated in their homes. This was a big problem for day centers that suddenly stopped having the elderly in their institutions.

It was in this framework that the challenge “The One and Only but Not Lonely” was proposed in partnership with a day centre under the Finnish Demola methodology: How to minimize feeling of isolation and loneliness of the elderly caused by COVID-19 pandemic?

For ten weeks, a team with six students had to research about the problem and propose solutions to the day centre. First ideas were about technological solutions such as artificial intelligent, virtual reality and chat rooms, amongst others. But after questionnaires and interviews to elderly and staff from day centers, the team concluded that technology was not the solution to this target group because most of them do not have smartphone or internet in their houses. After more research and brainstorm, the team proposed to create a box with activities to be delivered at the elderly’ home. The Director was very enthusiastic and encouraged the team to continue to develop the idea.

When the box was created, it was necessary to validate it, which occurred in a visit to the day centre, where it was very well received by the elderly and its staff. In addition, the proposed solution wined two co-creation contests, where CEO of companies and directors municipality organizations showed their interest in acquiring the box or helping to introduce it in the market.

However, the problem of how to operationalize the logistic and delivery of the box was not yet solved. Despite digital technology was not used in the initial solution, an Information System was necessary to include information about the box contents and when and where it was delivered.

The Information System includes a MySql database, that runs in a Microsoft Window or Linux server with an Apache web server with PHP installed. This server provides a backoffice that can be accessed from browsers and a API in rest web services accessed by a mobile application. In the backoffice organizations can configure the activities of the box, the elderly profile, personalize the box for the users, and create routes to delivery the box in their homes. The mobile application allows to know where and when the box needs to be delivered.

Because it was not possible to develop the Information System in the ten weeks of the Demola project, it is expected that another team of students takes this concept to develop the proposed system to be implemented in elderly organizations or companies interested in operationalizing this type of business. It is concluded that sometimes simple solutions to real problems don´t require digital technology in a first stage, but technology is increasingly present in today's world and ends up helping to solve real world challenges.

Keywords:

Elderly, well-being, co-creation, information system.