Safe artificial respiration: Students with own experience win thesis prize

This afternoon, fourth-year students Heerko Groefsema and Gerard Biemolt receive a prize for the best thesis in the course ICT Management and Consultancy. The prizewinning thesis is on the safety of artificial respiration at home, using 'domotica'. Domotica is technology which allows all electric home gear to communicate and it thus forms an aid for handicapped people.

Groefsema en Biemolt are experienced: Groefsema needs artificial respiration himself and therefore has a special wheelchair. Biemolt is his buddy and has been helping him out for years. Just this week a new national report by the Sociaal en Cultureel Plan Bureau observed that handicapped people are still behind in the fields of living, working, income and leisure. They still have trouble keeping up in the current educational system, but Groefsema and Biemolt show that they can manage otherwise.

At 4.15 p.m. this afternoon in the Mediacentrale in Groningen, the thesis prize will be handed by prof.dr.ir. Hans Wortmann, professor of Business Information Systems at the Faculty of Management and Organization, chairman of the ICT Platform of the University of Groningen and former Executive VP Development at Baan. Care is one of the main points of research at the Faculty, and in the ICT Platform, different RUG faculties cooperate in ICT related research.

The seminar at which the thesis prize was handed was on 'domotica in care' and organized by the I2Care project of the university and the Zorg Innovatie Forum. Both organizations focus on innovation in care in the north of the Netherlands. This year students examined the care infrastructure in this region.