Industry meets students

Household chores might seem like easy tasks, but for people with Korsakoff syndrome, even cooking can be quite a challenge. To help these patients, first-year students in the higher professional education-level Information and Communication Technology (HBO-ICT) programme at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS) developed a number of useful apps. From now on, cooking step by step will be a breeze.

Student's word exceeds expectations

‘The students’ apps have exceeded my expectations’, says health care psychologist Roeline Biemond from Amsta. ‘About a year ago, I came up with the idea to develop a product for the Korsakoff department.’ Amsta had previously collaborated with the AUAS during a minor in a different degree programme, so it was an easy choice to team up again. The HBO-ICT students were given the task of helping Korsakoff patients with cooking.

Cooking together, step by step

‘We familiarised ourselves with the Korsakoff syndrome quite thoroughly’, explains Luuk Huisman. The Game Development student carried out a great deal of research with his fellow students. ‘We wanted to know what it’s like to live with Korsakoff syndrome, so that we could develop an application that meets patients’ needs.’ During the delivery phase, lecturers, care staff and a number of Korsakoff patients tested all of the apps extensively. Luuk beams: ‘Amsta is very excited about the possibilities of our app, but we’re remaining critical. We’re going to continue developing the app in order to absolutely perfect it.’

Students Kimberley van der Breuk and Teun Kelvin collaborated on the Haphap app. The digital cooking aid not only divides tasks into smaller tasks, but also distributes these smaller tasks among various patients. This way, they can prepare a meal together. The app developed by the duo works on PCs, tablets and mobile phones. Hans, a resident of an Amsta facility, says the app is clear and straightforward. ‘You can cook step by step. This way, anyone can make a meal! All I need is a computer.’

CERN is one of the world's largest and most renowned centres for scientific research. It is therefore a great honour for the AUAS to collaborate with the institute.

The accounting system that the HBO-ICT students are working on is part of a large upgrade of ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment). This experiment involves the physics of highly reactive matter at extreme energy densities. The amount of data will be extremely large in this new phase of the experiment. A larger computer system is needed to handle all the data. An accounting system to store the associated metadata is indispensable.

Semester after semester, new cohorts of students work on this digital logbook – an interactive web application. They are given access to the ALICE database where, among other things, they have to consider the way in which data are stored. CERN scientists must be able to read and edit this data.

‘The collaboration with the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences is a success. The students and lecturers are helpful and dedicated. The students’ knowledge levels, in particular, are excellent. They have innovative ideas and are very familiar with new technologies. Sometimes, they introduce new technologies that we didn’t even know about ourselves’, the client says. ‘They are also very motivated. There were students from last semester who took part again this semester. They refused to leave the project.’

The collaboration with CERN and the associated assignment for HBO-ICT form part of the larger Software for Science project. All senior students from all HBO-ICT tracks can participate in this project.