Rens Brankaert saw that the growing pressure on the healtcare system created opportunity for technology to support elders in their daily lives. His grandfather had dementia and sometimes got lost. Thus he began designing the Welthuis Compass for people with dementia.

This resulted in research with Rian de Jong for a variety of prototypes, that made the idea come to live. From there they worked out what The Compass should look like, but also its functionality: “A hint towards the right direction: A product to help people with dementia navigate."

More research resulted in new vesions of the prototype. This prototype could be used for testing how well The Compass would support by finding the way back home.

Aumens was founded in 2023 get from the research to a product. The company keeps close ties with the university, but researches and innovates on their own to get The Compass to peoples homes.

Together with a panel of informal caregivers of people with dementia Aumens and Alzheimer Nederland looked at the need to go outside. With this URL you can read what the results of the research were. Note that the results are in Dutch.

Aumens gets nominated with The Compass as one of the eight best care innovations of The Netherlands in 2025.

Aumens receives funding to innovate The Compass further. The new version of The Compass is being made and thanks to the funding of CrossCare there will be tests with our new prototype in 2025.
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Together with Vention Technologies at the High Tech Campus Aumens works towards the final version of The Compass. This Compass will be even more user-friendly, but it also contains better technology inside. This way The Compass stays connected, can receive updates through the internet, and is traceable through GPS.

Together with Bureau 50 and Alzheimer Nederland Aumes looked at how The Compass can improve the quality of life of these people.

At Aumens we innovate technology for autonomy, together with the enduser.

The Compass that always points home, enables people to go outside by themselves agian.

- Rick en Vincent Eurlings, Directors Aumens

Aumens works towards a next test in collaboration with Dementie Netwerk Eindhoven. People from the regio of Eindhoven will try The Compass there and experience how it increases their autonomy. We also look at the implementations of The Compass in a home situation, among which are the distribution and service via the network.