Grasse - CHEMINDESSENS: Art and technology helping Alzheimer's sufferers

Founded in 2009, Chemindessens designs multimedia content using ICT in the field of healthcare and support

Interview with the Project Manager, Isabelle Chemin.

What is the purpose of Chemindessens? What does the LEGARE platform involve?
Founded in 2009, Chemindessens is a limited company which designs multimedia content using ICT in the field of healthcare and support.
It uses its experience with art therapy and audiovisual techniques used in hospitals and with vulnerable groups (Alzheimer's sufferers, the disabled).
The LEGARE platform is used to stimulate the sensory abilities of patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease, bring out the best in them and improve their social and family relationships.
Legare is a centralised social network on a Web 2.0 platform that aims to connect people suffering from Alzheimer's, their family and care staff at day care centres or residential care homes.
Legare offers a range of workshops featuring meetings, sensory awakening activities (such as taste) and discussions about works of art.  These workshops, conducted in residential care homes and Alzheimer's day care centres are filmed and published online on a Web 2.0 multimedia platform.
The platform provides access to multimedia content and a virtual album of memories for Alzheimer's residents through contactless technology at the patient's home and at the residential care home/day care centre.

What support have you found on the Côte d'Azur for launching the LEGARE platform?
I would like to go back in time a bit, before the implementation of LEGARE. In 2008, I had a grant from the Regional Council, under the CREASOL system, which was designed to help women set up in business. This involved six months of daily training with a comprehensive approach to micro-business management. This enabled me to lay the foundations for Chemindessens and clarify my professional and personal project. I worked on this business creation project for 2 years within the business incubator and the project incubation structure at the CICA in Sophia and was supported by the Paca Est incubator.
They quickly advised me to focus on the healthcare and support sectors which were the key areas of my personal experience and I responded to healthcare tenders from the regional authorities. In 2010, Chemindessens won the Departemental Council's Healthcare tender, then in 2011, the project was accredited with the PACALabs label by the PACA Regional Council.


Can you tell us about your career?
I graduated from  of the Ecole supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux (Bordeaux School of Fine Arts) in 1986.
My favourite subjects where the issue of movement in visual and sonorous space, the total and interdisciplinary art that we inherited from the Bauhaus and man's place and his interactivity with technology in a world that is increasingly automated and digitised.
I have therefore had an interdisciplinary career, where art, sciences and technology have continued to mix, meet, question and enhance each other.
My career as an artist, involved in the visual perception of society touched by speed, "man-machine" relationships, then later the neural networks and how they worked around memory, led me into discussions with professors and researchers, then to being working with them.
For example at the medical research centre at the Bordeaux University Hospital for Nuclear Resonance Imaging (NRI), then in Caen working on a creation by engineering students from the Institut du Rayonnement et de la Matière (Institute of Matter and Radiation) with the Human Sciences campus. I had asked to adapt a speech synthesis programme with a syntax and grammar designed to drive live 3D images of the brain and vocally "speak" with the neurones in the different cortical areas. This was highly innovative in 1992.
Alongside my artwork, I joined a European team of researchers for several years as a designer, involved in the development of virtual worlds with an immersive helmet to treat cognitive behavioural problems. (CBT)
Today, my work has led me to the societal development and the relationships of so-called able bodied people with vulnerable children or adults. This gave rise to the LEGARE platform provided by the Chemindessens company.

What connection do you have with the Resources and Research Memory Centre (CMRR) in Nice?

We formed a public/private partnership with the CMRR at the Nice University Hospital and Professor Robert has transferred personnel from his department to assess the LEGARE platform over six months and scientifically monitor this experiment.
This psychological assessment will be conducted by the CMRR with 16 Alzheimer's patients who are following art therapy workshops presented personally by me, each week at an Alzheimer's day care centre and a medical residential care home in the Alpes Maritimes region.

What are your development prospects?
We want to develop our services in the various facilities for elderly people suffering from Alzheimer's, as well as in people's homes.
The initial sociological and psychological assessments of the LEGARE platform are very positive. And we are awaiting the conclusions of studies to begin marketing our service with residential care homes and various facilities for elderly and dependent people in France.
We have already had requests from residential care homes and private hospitals who are very interested in the service provided to the people affected.

En savoir plus : www.chemindessens.fr