By Teuni Wolters (Alzheimer Nederland) & Karlijn van Rijen (QoLEAD) – 15-02-2024
On the 8th of February, more than 40 researchers spread across the country travelled to the Social Impact Factory – what’s in a name – for the DEMPACT kick-off. On behalf of QoLEAD, on this day referred to as ‘the project with AI and dementia’, Wijnand IJsselsteijn, scientific project coordinator, Hans Arnold, project manager and Karlijn van Rijen, impact manager, were present.
DEMPACT (dementia and impact) is a project that aims to increase the social impact of dementia research by increasing the usage of knowledge and products from research. Research generates a lot of knowledge; however, it is difficult to disseminate the knowledge to those who need it. The project works with ‘value in use’, which means that knowledge has no worth if it is not used. DEMPACT will support 10 research consortia in the Netherlands, including NCDC, ABOARD, MODEM, BIRD-NL, NDPI, SPREAD+, TAP-dementia, YOD-included, YOD-molecular en QoLEAD.
The DEMPACT team consists of the impact managers, coordinator, Vilans, Movisie, Pharos and Alzheimer Nederland. The coalition partners of DEMPACT play a role in spreading research knowledge, as well as knowing daily practice.
The kick-off took off with a presentation by QoLEAD’s, Alzheimer NL’s and DEMPACT’s Marco Blom. Together with colleagues Minke Kooistra and Dinant Bekkenkamp, he explained that the upcoming four years, DEMPACT will facilitate the ten research consortia in spreading their knowledge and products among professionals, people with dementia and their relatives. The project makes use of impact managers to function as a ‘bridge’ between research and practice. Five impact managers will be active, each responsible for one field of impact: research, education, healthcare and wellbeing and industry. They will facilitate the different research projects in disseminating the knowledge being generated.