Kickoff for digital services Burum

Burum, December 7th, village centre Toutenburg.
Marcella Jansen of the Kollumerland c.a. municipality presents the actual status of 'Smart Rural Network Society' and the Digital Village Centre. After her speech, the virtual community website www.burum.info/digitaalplatform and a great number of digital health and welfare applications are demonstrated.

A virtual village centre is being constructed, in cooperation with the villagers. Innovative ICT applications try to reinvent and reinstate services, that have been disappearing because of increasing demographic decline. Quality of living may be retained, or even improved.

The virtual village centre starts with an interactive virtual community platform on the internet. Also, a health care pilot and a virtual video service desk. Of course, a lot more is possible e.g. supermarket services, help and contact improvements of inhabitants.

Burum villagers are introduced to caire.nu

Survey

At the close of 2010, a survey was executed in Burum, in cooperation with the Frisian social research institute Partoer CMO Fryslân. The Burum inhabitants were asked what kind of services and facilities they were missing and which they would like to have returned to the village.

This survey led to a lot of new ideas and suggestions: a village website, accessible on the television set; a local section of Senior web, an internet community of senior citizens who learn their age group peers how to navigate the web safely and securely; delivery of books and shoppings to the village centre depot; a website organising neighbourly assistance; a video service desk in the village centre to access municipal, banking or health care service providers. Other ideas were online shopping, online gaming, book swap via internet or television, mobility sharing, or mutual assistance by swapping expertise.

Joanneke Holtrup of home care institution Thuiszorg Het Friese Land explains to the villagers how the video communication functions. At the moment, her organisation delivers long distance home care to more than 120 clients.

Health care

The 7 December evening was focussing on the digital possibilities for health care.

During the last few months, the health care subgroup, chaired by Partoer specialist Trees Flapper has started to work on the results of the 2010 survey. The group selected six digital applications that were already available in the Netherlands and had their owners present them to the villagers. These were:

50plusnet
Caire.nu
Video home care by THFL
Mijngezondheid.nl ('my health')
Internet monitoring of blood glucose, weight and blood pressure
Prevention of overweight

ICT specialist Jan Zijlstra, himself a Burum villager, is developing the virtual village community website , based on the Ning platform.

The Burum villagers can use the virtual community website to search for information on virtual health care applications, or discuss the availability and sensibility of these digital services. There are a chat facility, a forum, a blogging module and they can share media. In this way, they cooperate to realise their ideal village centre. An enhanced physical, brick a and wood village centre, accompanied and assisted by a virtual village centre.

The evening was attended by approximately 35 villagers.

Dutch version of this posting

All pics © Kabel Noord, Gijs van Hesteren