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Why not go for a pan European trialDementia doesn’t know borders! It affects people all over Europe and all over the world. Two and a half years after the project has started and almost three years after our proposal was submitted for funding - one thinks: did we do everything right? If we now had the opportunity to submit MARIO as a proposal what would we change Partners? Roles? Technologies? Types of instruments for validating our ideas?

What we see as a priority now based on the work completed to date is the need to conduct a Pilot RCT for MARIO bringing together partners from different sectors to examine the feasibility of robot companions versus usual care and other technologies to improve quality of life of PWD.

The outcome of such a trial would form the basis for a definitive large Randomised Control Trial at trans-European or international level to truly measure the effectiveness of a companion robot to improve the quality of life of people with dementia. To this aim, we are fostering synergies in the design and development levels with institutions at global level potentially including partners from Korea and Japan.