Studiohead director Cian Plumbe presents Grouple to the audience of the Design Council’s Living Well with Dementia launch, sharing the podium with Paul Burstow MP, David Kester, CEO of the Design Council and Baroness Sally Greengross .

Grouple recieved a very warm reaction from the crowd, as did the other four winning projects from the challenge.

You can read more about all the projects at the following website:
http://www.livingwellwithdementia.com/

and more about Grouple at :
http://www.grouple.cc

Grouple is a private online hub for families caring for someone with dementia. It is a secure space to share responsibilities, observations and positive experiences, and an easy way to include more members of the family in the care effort.

Grouple is currently in an Alpha test phase and we are looking for strategic partners to halp deliver Grouple to the wider public.

Studiohead created Grouple in collaboration with Ifung Lu, Louise Wilson, Meike Walcha, with help and advice from Dementia UK, Jewish Care and Adam Oliver from BT Innovate and Design.

A lovely video produced by the Design Council in which we talk about Grouple and the design process.

Studiohead in collaboration with Louise Wilson, Meike Walcha and Ifung Lu are launching “Grouple” today at the Design Council, supported by the Department of Health.

The website was created as part of the Design Council’s Living Well with Dementia Challenge.

Grouple is a private online hub for families caring for someone with dementia. It provides a single point of contact and helps share the responsibilities of care.

The website is currently in an early testing phase, and we are looking for partners and funding opportunities to make it available to the public.

A really fascinating day with the Imperial College team in the Science Museum learning from the pioneers of keyhole surgery, out of retirement to relive the old ways of doing things (when I say old I mean in the 1980s).

We are very excited to have several of our Surgical Simulation projects in public demonstration in tonight’s Science Museum Lates event. Tonights event is hosted by our parters at Imperial College London department of Surgery and Cancer, Open from 6.45pm to 10pm, and free to enter, you can see our Inflatable Operating Theatre, and our new Angiogram Simulation in action. Hope to see you there…

Twitter: #smlates
More information on the event here.

BBC World’s “The Health Show” filmed a feature using the inflatable operating theatre Studiohead created for Imperial College London. This version of the surgical training simulation features an Angioplasty; a wire is inserted through the artery in the thigh to unblock an obstructed blood vessel.

In normal cases the patient is under local anaesthetic during the procedure, and so in this set up, we have concealed an actor under the simulated patient to create realistic pressures on the clinical team.

The large ‘C-arm’ is an X-ray machine that allows the cardiologist to see the blood vessels, the blockage, and the inserted stent. We recreated a portable simulation of this imposing equipment, which is linked to a virtual reality simulation of the heart and blood vessels shown on the screens, created by Imperial College engineers.

In creating the simulation, we spent time observing real angioplasty’s in hospitals in London and Oxford to decide how to recreate the procedure in a realistic, but low-cost and portable way.

The resulting simulation provides an immersive training environment for clinical teams that recreates the pressures of the real thing, as well as a valuable tool for engaging the public about this increasingly common operation that is often used following a heart attack.

You can see the feature from “the Health Show” here:
http://rockhopper.tv/programmes/756

Studiohead have been successful in the Design Council’s most recent Design Challenge. Together with Louise Wilson, Ifung Lu and Meike Walcha, we entered a proposal to create a brand new tool to help families living with dementia. The tool, provisionally called Grouple, will be a combination of a website and physical products that help families and friends co-ordinate their care for someone with Dementia.

At the heart of the concept is the idea that we can make caring and sharing for someone with dementia more accessible and less daunting for people on the periphery of the care network, and that by providing the tools to do this, we can enhance the lifestyle of the person with dementia and relieve the pressure on their primary carers.

You can see an animation of our original concept here. We have made it public in order to gain feedback, so don’t be shy with your comments.

We are at the start of this very exciting project, and we will be undertaking considerable user-research to refine and improve our ideas, and will be producing a prototype for public display at the end of March.

We are undertaking this challenge with support from BT Innovate & Design, and Jewish Care.

We will keep this news page and our facebook page updated as the project develops, so do check back regularly.

For more information on the Challenge, and to read about the four other successful proposals please visit www.designcouncil.org.uk/dementia

If you are near Stoke Newington on Friday evening, do pop by! There will be excellent Christmas present buying opportunities.

Studiohead have just completed a new website for Events and Consulting company Unwired Ventures. Unwired specialise in creating events and knowledge centred on the worlds of work and technology, advising some of the world’s best known organisations. Their new website needed to reflect the forward thinking nature of their business, be simple to keep up to date with their ever-growing global events calendar, and embrace all that is new in the world of social networking.

We designed an understated, but elegant background and layout, to make full use of photographic content, an expandable, newspaper style front page, and a simple, consistent top-bar navigation…

Not only does the site help promote new events, but we have set up WorkTech TV, to show some of the best talks from previous events…

View the site at unwired.eu.com