Dementia Care
Dementia is one of the biggest health and care challenges of our time. Around one million people in the UK live with dementia, a figure expected to reach 1.4 million by 2040, and it is the UK’s leading cause of death.
Two drugs that can modestly slow early Alzheimer’s disease are now licensed in the UK, but NICE has not recommended them for NHS use. Most dementia care still happens outside the health system: at home, supported by family carers and local authorities, and later in care homes.
Since 2017, Helix has used human-centred design to support dementia research and to develop products and services for people living with dementia, their carers and the professionals who support them. Human-centred design makes sure that new technologies and services meet the complex health and social needs of the people they are meant to help.
Below is a summary of our key projects, with links to publications, reports and press.
Projects on this page
Care Research & Technology
The UK Dementia Research Institute’s Care Research & Technology centre (CR&T) at Imperial College London develops technologies to help people with dementia live safely and well at home. It brings together clinicians, engineers, data scientists and researchers.
Helix is part of the centre. Since 2017, we have led its public and patient involvement strategy, so that people affected by dementia help shape the research, and we design products and services to support the centre’s research.
We also set up and support the Dementia Lived Experience Group. Its members, people living with dementia and people who have cared for someone with dementia, meet regularly to advise on the centre’s research strategy.
Visit the UK DRI Care Research & Technology website
Minder: a smart home platform for dementia research
Minder is a remote monitoring platform that underpins much of the research at CR&T. Sensors in the home record activity, sleep and measurements such as blood pressure and weight. Machine learning turns this data into a picture of each person’s daily routine, and a monitoring team of clinicians responds to health alerts from each home.
Our role is to make sure that participants, and future users of the technology, have a strong voice in how it develops, and that the relationships between participants, researchers and clinicians work well. Our work includes:
- Designing interfaces for clinicians and participants, including a clinical monitoring dashboard and a companion app for carers, so the right information reaches the right people at the right time.
- Design support for the centre’s engineering and science teams, on innovations ranging from point-of-care diagnostics and voice assistants on smart speakers to in-home radar, wearables and remote cognitive tests.
- The Minder brand and participant communications, including printed guides, videos and websites, so the study is clear and accessible.
- Testing and supporting new devices in our living lab and in participants’ homes, so that every new sensor or device works for participants, clinicians and researchers.
Watch a short video introduction to Minder
MinderCare: remote dementia care in the NHS
In 2024, the Minder platform underpinned MinderCare, a new NHS service run with the dementia and virtual ward teams at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. MinderCare provides remote care to around 100 people living with advanced dementia in North West London. It helps clinical staff to spot and treat illness early, monitor changes in behaviour, and reassure and support carers, with the aim of preventing avoidable hospital admissions.
Helix helped design the clinical service and ran feedback sessions with participants during home visits.
Building on this success, MinderCare has been funded through UKRI’s Build an NHS Fit for the Future: dementia research and innovation challenge to expand the service to around 500 people across three sites: London, Surrey and Cumbria.
Read about the Build an NHS Fit for the Future dementia challenge
BBC News: Smart beds and motion sensors – is this the future of dementia care?
InSleep46: sleep and early signs of Alzheimer’s disease
Insight 46 is a brain-health study of 502 people from the MRC National Survey of Health and Development, which has followed a group of people born in the same week in March 1946 throughout their lives.
As participants approached 80, InSleep46 used the Minder platform to measure the sleep of around 300 of them across the UK, to test whether sleep data alone could reveal early signs of Alzheimer’s disease. The team hope that the Minder sleep algorithm will be a practical and useful tool for identifying the onset of behavioural symptoms, alongside emerging blood biomarkers that can detect changes in the brain. For new dementia drugs to be effective, we need to get better at identifying people at risk earlier.
Alongside the study, we worked with Newcastle University on qualitative research into whether people would find under-mattress sensors acceptable as a way to screen for dementia risk.
ZeDTech: zero-burden technology for dementia
ZeDTech is a Network Plus funded by EPSRC and NIHR, and supported by Alzheimer’s Society, that explores the role of “zero-burden technology” in supporting people living with dementia.
Technology can improve daily life and ease pressure on families and services, but too often it is burdensome, inaccessible or poorly matched to people’s needs. ZeDTech aims to change this, so that new technologies are sustainable, affordable and genuinely supportive for the people who use them.
Helix played a key role in developing the ZeDTech proposal, drawing on the public involvement work we lead at CR&T. We now help deliver the network, making sure that people with lived experience of dementia contribute to every part of the programme, including its funded projects and events.
Visit the ZeDTech network website
Temporal Interference Brain Stimulation
Researchers at Imperial are developing a non-invasive way to stimulate deep parts of the brain. Temporal interference uses two weak electrical currents, applied through pads on the scalp, which combine where they overlap to stimulate a targeted area deep in the brain without surgery. The team is targeting the hippocampus, a region involved in memory, which could help people with dementia with memory and thinking tasks.
For the technology to help, the treatment must be acceptable and accessible to the people who would use it. We involved people affected by dementia and healthcare professionals from the earliest stages of development, through workshops and prototype testing, so that their experiences stay at the heart of the research.
Our user research found that the technology needs to be designed for home use, so that patients or carers can administer it themselves. Travelling to specialist clinics as often, and for as long, as effective treatment requires would not be practical.
Read more about our brain stimulation project
Read Imperial’s news story on surgery-free brain stimulation
Community Makers
People living with dementia were hit especially hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many were older, with complex health needs, and much of the support they relied on from visiting professionals, community groups, friends and family disappeared during lockdown. Changes to familiar routines were particularly hard for people with dementia, and carers reported widespread burnout.
In spring 2020, we set up Community Makers with Alzheimer’s Society and the Association for Dementia Studies at the University of Worcester. The project helped community dementia support groups across the country use digital technology to keep running their services remotely.
It grew into a knowledge exchange network, with a bespoke toolkit and regular forums where groups shared experiences, tested ideas and developed guidance on using technology with people with dementia and their carers.
Read our Community Makers publication
Tap & Chat
As lockdown restrictions eased, we continued this work, focusing on a mix of digital and in-person community support that could reach more isolated people. The pandemic had improved the digital skills of both professionals and community members, creating an opportunity for lasting benefits.
With the London Office of Technology and Innovation (LOTI), we created Tap & Chat, a prototype system to help people with little experience of technology take part in online meetings. It combined printable invitations, a purpose-made tablet stand and a very simple scanning app to help people organise and join Zoom meetings. We co-designed it with community groups across London and tested it in a two-month pilot with a virtual community group.
LOTI published a free toolkit so that local authorities and others can use the insights and ideas from the project.
Read about the project on the LOTI website
Download the LOTI dementia care toolkit
Work with us
We are always keen to hear from people interested in using human-centred design in dementia research and care. To talk to us about a project, contact Matt Harrison at matthew.jc.harrison@imperial.ac.uk.
