HELP ME BRUSH

Elderly citizens living in nursing homes often suffer from poor oral health. This is due to difficulties in maintaining a sufficient level of personal oral hygiene; mainly the omission of the brushing of teeth and/or dental prostheses, combined with difficulties associated with having regular access to professional dental care.

In the HELP ME BRUSH PROJECT we provide a group of nursing home residents with electrical toothbrushes which are modified to allow for data collection to a server. From here, we provide statistics and calm reminders to the caregiving staff, in order to remind them that a resident has not yet received the necessary brushing. The solution was requested and co-created with dentists, caregivers, elderly and relatives, and the results of this innovative project will hopefully be useful for reaching a higher level of oral care, avoiding hospitalisations, and reducing the strain on public and private care providers and hospitals. throughout all of Europe.

Objectives

An estimated 90% of elderly nursing-home residents suffer from poor oral hygiene caused by missing or low-quality mechanical tooth brushing efforts, which leads to an increased occurrence of pneumonia and other diseases. The HELP ME BRUSH PROJECT will build and evaluate a new and innovative ICT-based care product for improving the oral hygiene of elderly residents living in a nursing home by identifying residents that have not received the minimum oral care needed and remind the caregivers to facilitate the missing tooth brushing.

Expected results and impact

A significant “improvement in adherence-level compared to citizens own baseline measured as number of brushing actions (number) and length (seconds/brushing-actions)”
A high “citizens’ level of satisfaction with the solution# (using a Likert scale)
A high “caregiver staffs’ level of satisfaction with the solution” (Likert scale)
A high “clinical dentist staffs’ level of satisfaction with the solution” (Likert scale))
A high “relatives’ level of satisfaction with the solution” (Likert scale)
Net earnings of EUR 3 million by 2020, corresponding to a total ROI of 50% by 2020

Partners

Partners involved in the project

Organization	Type	Country	Website
ALIVIATE	SME	Denmark	www.aliviate.dk
ZITEC	SME	Romania	www.zitec.com
BILLUND	End User	Denmark	www.billund.dk
GOEG	R&D	Austria	www.goeg.at
UM	R&D	Portugal	www.uminho.pt

Project name: HELP ME BRUSH – IMPROVING ORAL CARE IN NURSING HOMES
Website: www.aliviate.dk\helpmebrush
Coordinator: Mr. ESBEN HUNNERUP, CEO of ALIVIATE DEVELOPMENT APS, DENMARK (ALIVIATE)
Duration: 6 months
Starting date: 12/2018
Total budget: € 260.000
Public contribution: € 200.000

Contact

Esben Hunnerup

E.: euprojects@aliviate.dk

T.: +45 2085 9180