Person-centred communication, tools, and research in the dementia field

Recent developments in the field of dementia highlight the importance of aligning care with the preferences, needs, and circumstances of people with cognitive complaints and the wider public, particularly those at increased risk of developing dementia. This thesis explored and developed approaches to strengthen person-centredness in memory clinics, dementia prevention, and related human-centred tool development and research. The findings demonstrate a need to move beyond patient-centred and personalised medicine models that primarily focus on (maintaining) functional independence, towards a person-centred care approach that also supports people to live meaningful and fulfilling lives as a marker of quality of care in memory clinics. Engaging in person-centred communication approaches helps people visiting the memory clinic to feel more seen, heard, and understood as a person and helps clinicians to get to know the person with cognitive complaints better. This may be facilitated by using tools such as ‘Helder in Gesprek’, which has been designed, developed and evaluated in this thesis. Using different methods for involvement and engagement of people with elevated risk, addressing trust, and engaging in inclusive co-design and research processes are crucial ways to develop effective, fair, and relevant (digital) tools. As most digital tools for dementia prevention aimed at the general public are still in early stages of development and evaluation, there is a window of opportunity to shape (digital) tools in ways that support dementia-related health equity.