Global Needs Assessment in Dementia Care

Introduction: Global Needs Assessment for Dementia Care

This document presents the outlining our structured approach of the JAIN Foundation to needs assessments in dementia care. As an international non-profit organization, our mission is to improve the quality of life for people with dementia. We do this by facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration between care professionals, informal caregivers, policymakers, technology companies, and academic institutions. The JAIN Foundation specifically focuses on the responsible development and application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to support people with dementia, their families, and care professionals.

The complexity and dynamics of dementia care require a continuous understanding of current needs. Therefore, we do not view needs assessments as a one-time exercise, but as an ongoing process. By conducting multiple assessments annually, both nationally and internationally, we ensure that our initiatives and the solutions we support align with the real needs of all stakeholders: people with dementia, their loved ones, care professionals, and decision-makers.

The findings from these assessments guide the strategic direction of the JAIN Foundation and inform our contributions to targeted innovation, policy development, and collaboration within the care chain. This document provides insight into our methodology, focus areas, and alignment with relevant national and international policy frameworks, including the Dutch National Dementia Strategy and the guidelines of Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI).

We invite you to explore our approach and the insights derived from our research, aiming for a collaborative and effective response to the global challenges of dementia care.

Sincerely

Hans Arnold, CEO en Founder JAIN Foundation

 

JAIN Foundation – Global Needs Assessment in Dementia Care

Improving Quality of Life Through Innovation

The JAIN Foundation is an international non-profit organization focused on enhancing the quality of life for people with dementia. Through an interdisciplinary approach, the Foundation collaborates with care professionals, caregivers, policymakers, technology developers, and academic institutions to develop sustainable solutions. One of the core activities of the Foundation is the implementation of structured needs assessments—nationally and internationally—to identify current gaps and opportunities in dementia care. These assessments serve as the foundation for targeted innovation, policy engagement, and strategic partnerships. Central to the JAIN Foundation’s mission is the application of AI-driven tools and technologies that support people with dementia, empower caregivers, and reduce the burden on care professionals.

The Importance of Structural Needs Assessment

Needs assessment in dementia care is not a one-off task but a continuous learning process. The nature of dementia varies per individual, and societal and technological conditions are constantly evolving. By conducting multiple annual assessments, the JAIN Foundation remains informed about both urgent and emerging issues. These assessments target formal care providers, informal caregivers, policymakers, tech developers, and people living with dementia.

Key domains of focus include:

  • Autonomy and quality of life for people with dementia
  • Workload and support needs of care professionals
  • Availability and usability of technology, with a particular emphasis on AI applications
  • Ethics, privacy, and digital care acceptance
  • Public-private collaboration
  • Policy and funding models

Alignment with the Dutch National Dementia Strategy

The Foundation’s assessments align directly with the Dutch National Dementia Strategy 2021–2030, focusing on three pillars:

  1. Better quality of life for people with dementia and their loved ones
  2. More knowledge and insight into dementia
  3. A society designed to be dementia-friendly

The JAIN Foundation contributes to each:

  • Through co-creation with people with dementia, the Foundation develops solutions that enhance daily life.
  • Through collaboration with universities and the Expert Committee, JAIN stimulates knowledge growth in AI, technology, and ethics.
  • Through the JAIN Challenges and local pilots, inclusive and dementia-friendly living environments are being established.

Global Perspective: Views from ADI and Related Organizations

Awareness of technology’s potential in dementia care is growing worldwide. Organizations like Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI), Alzheimer Nederland, and the Alzheimer’s Society increasingly stress the role of technology in supporting people with dementia and their caregivers.

Technology, according to these organizations, should:

  • Promote independence and autonomy (supporting ADLs, memory aids, daily routines)
  • Provide safety and reassurance (wandering detection, fall sensors, medication reminders)
  • Facilitate social connection (video calling, simple devices, robotic companions)
  • Enhance cognitive stimulation and well-being (games, music therapy, VR)
  • Support caregivers (remote monitoring, platforms for emotional support and information sharing)
  • Be person-centered and easy to use (tailored to the phase of dementia)
  • Enable data-driven care (insight into health trends, prevention, personalized care)
  • Be ethically sound (safeguarding privacy, autonomy, and transparency)

Examples of Relevant Technologies:

  • Smart home technology (sensors, lighting, GPS)
  • Communication tools (video calling, simple phones/tablets)
  • Memory aids (digital calendars, talking clocks)
  • Wearables and monitoring (sleep, activity, vitals)
  • Virtual reality (reminiscence, relaxation)
  • Robotics (companion robots, pet robots)
  • Digital care coordination platforms

These insights are incorporated into the JAIN Foundation’s assessments and programming. They translate ADI’s guidelines into actionable innovations and interventions, tested locally through pilots and the JAIN Challenges. Increasingly, these tools are AI-powered, enhancing personalization, adaptability, and proactive care.

The JAIN Challenges: National and International Context

The JAIN Challenge is an annual innovation competition organized in various countries by the JAIN Foundation in partnership with local stakeholders. It is a key tool for gathering insights and encouraging solution development. Winners receive support in networking, validation, mentoring, and opportunities for international scale-up.

Multiple editions have been organized in the Netherlands, with support from care organizations, academic institutions, and regional development partners. International editions have been held in Spain, Switzerland, India, and Canada. The JAIN Challenges operate as ecosystems where needs, technology, care, and policy intersect.

Insights from these Challenges feed directly into the Foundation’s assessments. For example, rural Spain emphasizes digital support, while Dutch priorities focus on AI integration and workload reduction.

Role of the JAIN Expert Committee

The international JAIN Expert Committee includes professionals in:

  • Geriatrics and elderly care
  • Neuroscience and psychology
  • Ethics and AI governance
  • ICT and data science
  • Human-centered design and care innovation
  • Health policy and economics

Members are affiliated with universities, hospitals, governments, and innovative enterprises globally. Their expertise is crucial in interpreting assessment results and translating them into concrete recommendations for policy, product development, and implementation. Many experts focus on the ethical and practical integration of AI into dementia care.

The committee also advises national and international JAIN Challenges—reviewing submissions, mentoring winners, and identifying broader trends based on field experience. This creates continuous feedback between practice, science, and innovation.

Needs Assessment Methodology

The Foundation employs mixed-methods research, including:

  • Structured interviews with care professionals and caregivers
  • Focus groups with people with dementia and loved ones
  • Surveys with policymakers and tech developers
  • Participatory observations in home and care settings
  • Desk research and policy analysis
  • Data review from pilots and evaluations

A distinctive aspect of the Foundation’s method is the active involvement of people with dementia—as far as possible—in identifying and expressing their own needs. This inclusive innovation model leads to more relevant, person-centered solutions.

Findings from Recent Assessments

Key takeaways from recent analyses:

People with dementia and families:

  • Strong need for familiarity, safety, and routine
  • Digital support is welcome if simple, reliable, and privacy-safe
  • Concern over loss of autonomy due to over-controlling technology

Care professionals:

  • Persistent high workload and administrative burden
  • Positive attitudes toward intuitive and reliable technologies
  • Need for training and co-involvement in implementation

Policymakers:

  • Growing urgency over aging and workforce shortages
  • Demand for data-informed decision-making
  • Interest in scalable and cost-effective innovations

Tech developers:

  • Willingness to collaborate, but uncertainties around regulation
  • Need for access to real-life testing environments and data

Signals from the JAIN Expert Committee

  1. Gaps between technology and actual needs: Technologies are often complex, overfocused on monitoring, and lack social or emotional value. Integration into existing workflows remains limited.
  2. Ethical concerns remain under-addressed: AI decision-making risks autonomy. Privacy may be legally secured, but people still feel out of control. Digitally excluded groups may be marginalized.
  3. Inclusion of people with dementia in innovation: Their lived experience should guide every phase of development. This requires adapted research methods—short sessions, visuals, safe settings, involvement of familiar persons.
  4. AI and data for prevention: AI can help detect changes (e.g., sleep, behavior) to enable early intervention. However, systems must be transparent, explainable, and supportive—not autonomous or opaque.

Strategic Priorities for Future JAIN Challenges

Based on needs assessments and Expert Committee insights:

  • Social inclusion & technology: tools that connect, not isolate
  • Human-centered AI for home care: support, not control
  • Dementia-friendly living environments: smart neighborhoods, not just gadgets
  • Support for informal caregivers: digital balance between involvement and relief
  • Care ethics & AI governance: transparency, fairness, explainability
  • Prevention & early detection: AI as a tool, with clear response pathways

From Assessment to Action

The Foundation uses findings to:

  • Launch testbeds and validation pilots in real-life settings
  • Develop targeted JAIN Challenges
  • Advise governments and health insurers
  • Share best practices at international events and publications

Collaborations include:

  • Universities: UvA, TU/e, ETH Zürich
  • Care organizations in NL, Spain, India, Switzerland
  • Social-impact tech startups
  • Municipalities and regional health networks

Looking Ahead: From Insight to Impact

The JAIN Foundation views needs assessment as the starting point of impact-driven innovation. By mapping lived experiences and sector-wide gaps, the Foundation builds the foundation for better technologies, smarter policy, and inclusive collaboration. A central pillar of this innovation is the meaningful, ethical deployment of AI to support everyday life, caregiving, and professional practice in dementia care.

Our ambition: scale this approach across Europe and globally, focusing on:

  • Culturally contextualized solutions
  • Embedding innovations in care education and practice
  • Transparent ethics and safety evaluations
  • Long-term impact tracking

Conclusion

The JAIN Foundation’s global needs assessment exposes what is truly needed in dementia care. Through inclusive dialogue—from clients to policymakers—and by translating insights into action, the Foundation delivers unique contributions to future-proof care. The synergy of science, AI-powered innovation, and human dignity lies at the heart of JAIN’s global mission.

By explicitly aligning with both the Dutch Dementia Strategy and global insights from ADI, JAIN supports policy and practice that matter—locally and globally.

 

We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners.
Cookies settings
Accept
Privacy & Cookie policy
Privacy & Cookies policy
Cookies list
Cookie name Active

Privacy Policy

What information do we collect?

We collect information from you when you register on our site or place an order. When ordering or registering on our site, as appropriate, you may be asked to enter your: name, e-mail address or mailing address.

What do we use your information for?

Any of the information we collect from you may be used in one of the following ways: To personalize your experience (your information helps us to better respond to your individual needs) To improve our website (we continually strive to improve our website offerings based on the information and feedback we receive from you) To improve customer service (your information helps us to more effectively respond to your customer service requests and support needs) To process transactions Your information, whether public or private, will not be sold, exchanged, transferred, or given to any other company for any reason whatsoever, without your consent, other than for the express purpose of delivering the purchased product or service requested. To administer a contest, promotion, survey or other site feature To send periodic emails The email address you provide for order processing, will only be used to send you information and updates pertaining to your order.

How do we protect your information?

We implement a variety of security measures to maintain the safety of your personal information when you place an order or enter, submit, or access your personal information. We offer the use of a secure server. All supplied sensitive/credit information is transmitted via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology and then encrypted into our Payment gateway providers database only to be accessible by those authorized with special access rights to such systems, and are required to?keep the information confidential. After a transaction, your private information (credit cards, social security numbers, financials, etc.) will not be kept on file for more than 60 days.

Do we use cookies?

Yes (Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computers hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow) that enables the sites or service providers systems to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information We use cookies to help us remember and process the items in your shopping cart, understand and save your preferences for future visits, keep track of advertisements and compile aggregate data about site traffic and site interaction so that we can offer better site experiences and tools in the future. We may contract with third-party service providers to assist us in better understanding our site visitors. These service providers are not permitted to use the information collected on our behalf except to help us conduct and improve our business. If you prefer, you can choose to have your computer warn you each time a cookie is being sent, or you can choose to turn off all cookies via your browser settings. Like most websites, if you turn your cookies off, some of our services may not function properly. However, you can still place orders by contacting customer service. Google Analytics We use Google Analytics on our sites for anonymous reporting of site usage and for advertising on the site. If you would like to opt-out of Google Analytics monitoring your behaviour on our sites please use this link (https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/)

Do we disclose any information to outside parties?

We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your personally identifiable information. This does not include trusted third parties who assist us in operating our website, conducting our business, or servicing you, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential. We may also release your information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others rights, property, or safety. However, non-personally identifiable visitor information may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses.

Registration

The minimum information we need to register you is your name, email address and a password. We will ask you more questions for different services, including sales promotions. Unless we say otherwise, you have to answer all the registration questions. We may also ask some other, voluntary questions during registration for certain services (for example, professional networks) so we can gain a clearer understanding of who you are. This also allows us to personalise services for you. To assist us in our marketing, in addition to the data that you provide to us if you register, we may also obtain data from trusted third parties to help us understand what you might be interested in. This ‘profiling’ information is produced from a variety of sources, including publicly available data (such as the electoral roll) or from sources such as surveys and polls where you have given your permission for your data to be shared. You can choose not to have such data shared with the Guardian from these sources by logging into your account and changing the settings in the privacy section. After you have registered, and with your permission, we may send you emails we think may interest you. Newsletters may be personalised based on what you have been reading on theguardian.com. At any time you can decide not to receive these emails and will be able to ‘unsubscribe’. Logging in using social networking credentials If you log-in to our sites using a Facebook log-in, you are granting permission to Facebook to share your user details with us. This will include your name, email address, date of birth and location which will then be used to form a Guardian identity. You can also use your picture from Facebook as part of your profile. This will also allow us and Facebook to share your, networks, user ID and any other information you choose to share according to your Facebook account settings. If you remove the Guardian app from your Facebook settings, we will no longer have access to this information. If you log-in to our sites using a Google log-in, you grant permission to Google to share your user details with us. This will include your name, email address, date of birth, sex and location which we will then use to form a Guardian identity. You may use your picture from Google as part of your profile. This also allows us to share your networks, user ID and any other information you choose to share according to your Google account settings. If you remove the Guardian from your Google settings, we will no longer have access to this information. If you log-in to our sites using a twitter log-in, we receive your avatar (the small picture that appears next to your tweets) and twitter username.

Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Compliance

We are in compliance with the requirements of COPPA (Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act), we do not collect any information from anyone under 13 years of age. Our website, products and services are all directed to people who are at least 13 years old or older.

Updating your personal information

We offer a ‘My details’ page (also known as Dashboard), where you can update your personal information at any time, and change your marketing preferences. You can get to this page from most pages on the site – simply click on the ‘My details’ link at the top of the screen when you are signed in.

Online Privacy Policy Only

This online privacy policy applies only to information collected through our website and not to information collected offline.

Your Consent

By using our site, you consent to our privacy policy.

Changes to our Privacy Policy

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page.
Save settings
Cookies settings