Communication Technology


highlighting its products when we meet with mental healthcare providers. Similarly, Britplas will support us, by highlighting the Cowall in the UK.” (A Cowin was shown on the Britplas stand at October’s IHEEM (Institute of Healthcare Engineering and Estate Management) Healthcare Estates 2014 event). Just after we met in July 2014, Erik Kuijpers


The patient/service-user can contact staff or family and friends via a video connection.


and Cor Datema were due to meet with senior healthcare staff and decision-makers staff at two UK high secure hospitals, and had already held ‘serious discussions’ with a number of other mental healthcare facilities in the UK. “That July visit was a great success,” Erik


Relaxing themes have been specifically designed to reduce anxiety and stress. The combination of soothing audio and slowly changing imagery provides a sense of relaxation.


Kuijpers explained when I spoke to him by telephone a short time after the pair’s latest visit to the UK, in early September 2014. “We had had a really enthusiastic response at Design in Mental Health 2014 in May, and thus came back to the UK sooner than expected just a couple of months later.” Last year the pair installed a Cowin-46 – the


Playing games, or doing a jigsaw, on the Cowall are part of the Recornect approach to reducing anxiety and stress.


video/audio screen with sophisticated capabilities, has been further refined and developed. Now available in the different sizes described, it not only incorporates touchscreen communication facilities, such as the ability to make telephone calls using a video phone, access the Internet, and watch television or listen to radio, but also, via a series of ‘apps’ constantly being expanded, enables service- users to see their own personal daily agenda, watch relaxing images of nature, or view their own photographs of family and friends. Erik Kuijpers said: “Users can also, for


example, use the Cowall to read a book, play games, and write notes on a ‘notepad’, perhaps to include questions about their treatment to ask care staff subsequently. Since the original Cowall was developed, the device’s capabilities have become considerably more advanced, and, depending on the level of access afforded to them, users or staff can now also use the ‘wall’ for functions such as switching on and off, or dimming, room lighting, opening the blinds, or setting the room temperature. Staff can also set up the software to enable patients to display information on their therapy regime, and their ‘rights’ while in care in their chosen language.”


TALKS WITH POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS When I met with them in July 2014 in Berkshire – the pair subsequently spent several days in the UK talking to potential customers, including estates and facilities and clinical personnel at some of England’s high secure mental healthcare facilities, before making a further trip to the UK in early September – Erik Kuijpers and Cor Datema emphasised that they believe the Cowall has significantly wider potential than just use in mental healthcare facilities; it could, for instance, in future be adapted for use in acute care settings.


SHOWING OFF THE SYSTEM “Having got the business off on a firm financial footing,” he continued, “we are now looking to show off the Cowall to the world. We began doing this in the Netherlands late in 2013, and subsequently sold the first Cowall in February


22 THE NETWORK January 2015


2014 to the Klinisch Centrum Kristal in Nootdorp in the Netherlands, a high intensive care mental healthcare facility that incorporates both inpatient and outpatient mental healthcare services, and a ‘crisis unit’. The Cowall has been installed within a Seclusion Room within a new acute inpatient building accommodating single rooms. This was the first Cowall sale worldwide. We also initiated a research project, involving four undergraduate students from the Eindhoven Technology University (Human Technology Interaction Department), who researched the impact of the Cowall’s installation in the particular location, and how staff and service-users perceived it. Such studies are invaluable in helping us further develop the system. The research study ran from March to June this year, and the students are now collating the results. One thing we hope to discover is which ‘apps’ on our first ‘product’ are most used, felt to be the most valuable, and best understood.”


ABILITY TO MANUFACTURE ‘IN VOLUME’ Recornect now, Erik Kuijpers added, has the ability to have the communication walls manufactured ‘in volume’. He explained: “Our original plan had always been to bring the product to the Dutch market this year, but when we exhibited on the Britplas stand at this year’s Design in Mental Health show in May, interest from potential UK users was considerably higher than we expected. Cor Datema, and the chairman of window, door, curtain-walling, and fencing specialist, Britplas, Kevin Gorman, had first met in 2012 at a Scandinavian congress on healing environments, and recognised that the Cowall screen and Britplas’s Safevent window shared some elements in terms of safety and development potential. Kevin Gorman then visited Eindhoven and was enthusiastic, and suggested we attend the 2013 Design in Mental Health event.


RECIPROCAL SUPPORT “While we have no formal commercial tie-up with Britplas, we have agreed to support the company in mainland Europe, for instance


larger of the two new Cowins developed to date – within the DIMHN Better Bedroom at Britplas’s Warrington headquarters.


DIFFERENT HISTORY IN THE UK AND THE NETHERLANDS “In fact,” Erik Kuijpers added, “we have found the UK to be even more receptive to the Cowall than we had anticipated, perhaps due to the fact that there is a longer history of seeking better solutions than the ‘traditional’ seclusion and restraint practice than there is, say, in the Netherlands.” The device’s co-developers have also met with potential customers in both Belgium and Germany over the past few months. Erik Kuijpers said: “While we initially


developed the communication walls primarily for high secure environments, as an aid to de-escalation, we believe the system would work equally well, for instance, for elderly people with dementia, or with children. We have recently sold a system to a Dutch healthcare organisation that works with children in crisis, called Karakter, based in Nijmegen. In future, there is no reason why we should not sell the devices to large acute hospitals. The biggest current application area is mental healthcare, but in a few years’ time we will have a much greater idea of all the potential markets.”


SELECTING A TABLET MANUFACTURER Recornect is currently in the process of selecting one of more tablet device manufacturers, evaluating such aspects as good in-built cameras and the devices’ audio quality to enable the best possible ‘fit’ in terms of use of such portable devices in conjunction with the Cowall and Cowin. The software system is currently Windows-based, although in future it will be refined to also be compatible with the iOS platform. Erik Kuijpers added: “We hope that the


system will attract considerable interest from a wide range of potential users.” It is hoped that a Cowall will feature in the


Better Bedroom 2, soon to be incorporated within the refurbished inpatient unit at The Sussex Partnership Trust’s Swandean adult inpatient unit in Worthing.


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