The aim of the MOVEMENZ project "Mobile, self-determined living for people with dementia in the neighborhood" is the development of specifications for mobile technologies to provide the infrastructural preconditions and conceptual standards that allow people with dementia to move as freely as possible in their neighborhood according to their individual needs and requirements. The course of this preliminary project follows a demand-oriented technology development and analyzes the needs of potential users of technical support considering the respective actors in the care process (dementia patients, relatives, professional caregivers, service providers, etc.) and in the neighborhood (store owners etc.). The empirical demand analysis then deduces the need for a technical tool and a social intervention from these different expectations to meet as many of the requirements of the actors in the triangle of care and the neighborhood as possible. This procedure consequently implements the idea of social innovation where a technical innovation is analyzed in its context of use.

Full access to the "field" is a key success factor for empirical research. In addition, only permanent local support can guarantee an uninfluenced survey of demands. However, this survey also relies on the dedicated contributions of professional caregivers. The "Evangelische Heimstiftung GmbH (EHS)", a German organization which provides home care, outpatient and inpatient care and runs several care homes, therefore agreed to provide this low threshold of access in one of their homes and also promised the full support of the in-house staff. In this way, the preliminary project can use the wealth of experience of EHS that looks with 6,900 employees after almost 10,000 people in need of care or assistance and is thus the biggest provider of social services in the field of elderly care in Baden-Württemberg.

In addition, the survey of demands is accompanied by an interdisciplinary research process where technology assessment is part of the development. In this interdisciplinary and / or transdisciplinary reflection process aspects of ethics, law, economy, technology, society, and nursing science are observed based on an empirical analysis. The aim is to consider not only technical but also legal aspects (e.g. Who is liable for damages that might occur during the use of technical aids?), economic aspects (e.g. How is the cost-benefit ratio of technological and social innovations?), and ethical / social aspects. The latter ask for the areas where the technology shall be applied and which replacement relations have to be observed. In performing this TA which accompanies the development, ITAS is supported by a multi-disciplinary, multi-perspective expert group which phrases the recommendations for the project and the local practice and thus guarantees the connectivity of the research work.