IT solutions that automatically close fridge doors, or switch off cookers when you leave the house. Bathroom cupboards that help chronically ill people remember to take their medication on time. Television-based home care gadgets operated by remote control. Welcome to the brave new world of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL).
Clearly possibilities are far reaching with AAL, a field of research and development combining the IT, medicine, social care and housing industries.
Like e-health, AAL has attracted the interest of the European Commission. Brussels has now set up an AAL programme to run from 2008 to 2013.
It is also being funded under article 169 of the EU treaty and complements the seventh Framework Programme, “Our goal is to foster the emergence of innovative ICT products and services for ageing well”, said Dr. Paul Timmers, Head of ICT for Inclusion at the EC’s Directorate-General Information Society and Media.
“In total, it will be a €600m programme”, said Dr Timmers, talking to around 400 guests at the first European AAL event in Berlin, on 1 February 2008.
Half of the money will be provided by 22 member states with the rest to be supplied by industry. Each partner state in the AAL programme has one seat in the coordinating body, the AAL Association.
The e-health connection
In Berlin it turned out that, although the initiative is called the ‘AAL programme’, it is very much concerned with e-health, at least in the initial stages.
“Our focus in 2008 will clearly be on e-health projects”, said the Vice President of the AAL Association, Peka Kahri from Finland. The first calls for proposals are expected to be issued in the spring. In 2009, the focus of the AAL programme will shift to ‘mobility’ and ‘information and learning’.
The AAL Association is looking for proposals for products or services related to homecare. “We expect solutions for elderly, with either risk factors or chronic diseases, that help people stay in their home environment longer, have less hospital admissions, and live a more comfortable life,” said Kahri.
He stressed that purely medical projects will have difficulties securing funding. “Important points to consider are practicality, acceptance and suitability into a real-life environment. We also expect sustainable business models.”
The solutions need to be citizen-centric, to involve partners from at least three European countries and should be applicable not only in one region, but ideally all over Europe.
“We are not looking for massive endeavours, but rather for medium-sized projects that need a maximal funding of around €3m each”, said Kahri. The focus of the projects has to be on development rather than research.
This is very different to AAL projects funded under the seventh Framework Programme, which is more research-oriented. “The ideal would be an expected time to market for the product or service of two to three years”, said Kahri.
Best practices and the AALiance
To get a feeling for what the European Commission considers to be relevant in AAL, the European AAL day in Berlin featured a Best Practice session. Seven projects that are being funded under the seventh Framework Programme were presented.
The Netcarity Project, for example, has been running for a year now. It is located in Trento, Italy, and Eindhoven, Netherlands. The goal is to develop an infrastructure to help the elderly in everyday life by using wireless technologies.
In Amsterdam, Belfast, and Lulea, Sweden, a pilot installation, the Cogknow Project, focuses on patients with mild dementia.
Among the solutions being developed are reminder systems for meal times and brushing teeth, RFID-based device location and picture dialling functions for telephones to make it easier to reach social contacts.
The European Commission is not alone in thinking about AAL on a European level.
Another pan-European initiative was presented in Berlin, the AALiance. It is industry driven and, so far, has 14 partners from across Europe.
It has funding of €1.6m, €1m of which comes from the EU. “Our goals are to define standardisation requirements and to develop recommendations for a European R&D policy”, said AALiance-spokesman Wolfgang Gessner from Germany.
There is a detailed schedule already in place. Policy recommendations are to be published in April. The first paper on standardisation issues can be expected in summer 2008, and the draft of a strategic research agenda will probably be available by the end of the year.
Later, in 2009, there will be a big European AAL-conference organised by the AALiance. Gessner explained: “The ultimate goal is to carry over the alliance after two years into a European technology platform for AAL-solutions.”
Finally, there is a European study on best practices in AAL running. It is called “ICT enabled independent living for elderly”, with the German industry association VDI/VDE-IT in the driving seat.
“We would like to draw a first map of activities that are going on in Europe,” said Christian Wehrmann, project manager at VDI/VDE-IT. The objective is to produce individual country reports on the AAL-activities of 27 EU member states and an online database which will list European key actors, research projects, available products and literature on AAL.
Links
www.independent-living-for-elderly.eu
Philipp Grätzel