Hilde Verbeek’s involvement with the Limburg Living Lab in Aging and Long-Term Care dates back to 2006 and this April, she was appointed chair. “Life can be better than we think for older persons. That’s why we focus on empowering people to have as much space as possible to live the way they want to and to stay as autonomous as possible.” The empowerment also extends to those caring for older persons. “It can be small things, like carers going against established protocols and changing the breakfast routine and seeing that it allows the older people to become more active and take more controls. We want to facilitate such improvements through scientific research.”

This type of care, if done well, is complex, comprising subjects such nursing, gerontology, psychology, medicine, physiotherapy, sociology, education, technology, artificial intelligence and data science. “UM is a great place to do this because it’s a young, dynamic university and we are big on interfaculty collaboration.” There is also an interesting parallel with PBL since the Living Lab looks at complex situations and formulates its research questions accordingly. “We get input from older people and their relatives, from care personnel and so forth – mostly about problems they’re facing but also about best practices and spontaneous innovation. Hospital care has a long tradition of integrating research – but developing a scientific infrastructure for homecare and nursing homes as we did was a genuine innovation.”

Caring for an ageing population will require a rethink, according to Verbeek. “There’s for example a disproportionate burden on mainly daughters of those affected with age-related disease. They are usually primarily responsible to take on roles as the main informal carer, thus missing work, and eventually succumbing to ill health or burnout. In the end, this is unsustainable. We need more inclusive societal models, also when calculating costs of care or addressing impact.” Add to that the labour shortage – both in general and in this sector in particular. “If you calculate based on the current care model, one out in four people would have to work in caring professions to cover our needs over the next decades. That is not sustainable – we need a rethink.”

“By international comparison, the Netherlands has a relatively well-developed long-term care system, but the public perception is quite negative. There is still a cultural stigma around ageing and people want to look away rather than engage.” Ageing though is inevitable; one out of five people will struggle with dementia at some point in their lives. “I think we need a cultural change in the way we look at an ageing population and the opportunities that might bring. Yes, we need to deal with ageing structurally, sustainably – but maybe we should also embrace it more.”

Text: Florian Raith
Portrait photos Hilde Verbeek: Paul van der Veer
Other photos: Harry Heuts