Projects on independent living services

SOPRANO is the acronym for "Service Oriented PRogrammable smArt enviroNments for Older Europeans". SOPRANO will design and develop highly innovative, context-aware, smart services with natural and comfortable interfaces for older people at affordable cost, meeting requirements of users, family and care providers and significantly extending the time we can live independently in our homes when older. User friendliness and acceptability is top priority for the project - a zero-slope learning curve is to be achieved and inter-faces are to "vanish" into domestic settings. Large-scale viability in real homes will be demonstrated with 600 users to raise public awareness and accelerate AAL (Ambient Assisted Living) exploitation.
A consortium of 20 partners from European universities, public bodies and private companies is teaming up to develop next-generation technology to allow older people to continue to live independent lives in their own homes. The part-EU funded Service Orientated Programmable Smart Environments for Older Europeans (SOPRANO) project will seek to develop information technology (IT) -based assisted living services aimed at promoting the independence of older people, improving their quality of life and addressing the issue of an ageing European population.
The project will demonstrate how telecare technology, Information Technology (IT) and mobile communications can be harnessed to develop new community-based models of care and support. The research hopes to advance global knowledge in semantic IT, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) location, remote diagnostics, radar and integration architectures. 600 users will test the large-scale viability of these technologies in real homes.
The project will have two goals: to develop new ways of integrating assistive technology, telecare and telehealth solutions into users' homes to provide assistance; and to investigate the motor, sensory and cognitive difficulties experienced by older people and the best vision, voice or sensory-based means of communicating with users.
By integrating assistive technology with advanced telecare and telehealth solutions, SOPRANO hopes to develop a fully networked home environment. Integrated appliances and devices will support users in carrying out their everyday activities, and advanced telecare and telehealth solutions will monitor health and well-being and ensure that assistance is provided when required.
The project will run for 40 months and its budget is around 12 million Euros of which 7 million are funded by the Commission. The project will be coordinated by the Tunstall Group Ltd (United Kingdom) and has a total of 25 partners from all over Europe.

The SAVE@Work4Homes project aims to achieve a very significant reduction in energy consumption in social housing across Europe, across all types of existing building and across all tenant groups, by providing information and support to tenants enabling them to optimise their energy consumption behaviour.
The approach recognises the great variety of living conditions and cultures in European social housing and does not attempt to define a single best strategy. Instead, partners in 6 organisations in the three Member States with the highest proportion of social housing will develop and test a complementary set of viable and effective Energy Awareness Services, based on a "toolbox" of components to be developed in the project.
Components of the system will be subjected to extensive functional testing with tenants to select from open content options and finalise interface and presentation features. In the introduction phase, tenants will be instructed in the use of any services or components which require their active access such as portal or assessment tool. After introduction, field trials take place under conditions as close as possible to those expected on full deployment. Dissemination is targeted to European social housing as a whole through sponsoring partner European association CECODHAS (The European Liaison Committee for Social Housing). The evaluation programme is a most important part of the project, with the goal of both summative and formative evaluation of the success of the various energy awareness raising strategies and techniques.

Das SEN@ER - Seniorenwirtschaft Netzwerk Europäischer Regionen ist eine gemeinsame Initiative europäischer Regionen. Es wurde von der Region Nordrhein-Westfalen ins Leben gerufen.
Der Ausgangspunkt dieser europäischen Initiative ist es, das Altern nicht als eine Bedrohung sondern als eine Herausforderung und Chance zu sehen, die zu mehr Wirtschaftswachstum und einer Steigerung der Wettbewerbsfähigkeit Deutschlands und Europas führen wird. Um dieses Potenzial auch umzusetzen, wurde ein "Seniorenwirtschaft Netzwerk der Europäischen Regionen" (SEN@ER Netzwerk) aufgebaut, um die Entwicklung und Vermarktung von Produkten und Dienstleistungen für diesen Markt zu fördern und dadurch einen Beitrag zur Regionalentwicklung und Schaffung von Beschäftigung und Arbeitsplätzen zu leisten.
Das SEN@ER Netzwerk wurde am 18. Februar 2005 auf der ersten Europäischen Konferenz zur Seniorenwirtschaft in Bonn/Deutschland von 11 europäischen Regionen gegründet.

Die Landesinitiative Seniorenwirtschaft NRW veranstaltet die erste europäische Konferenz zur Seniorenwirtschaft 2005, die vom 17. – 18. Februar 2005 in Bonn (Deutschland) stattfindet.
Sie ist Teil einer vom Ministerium für Gesundheit, Soziales, Frauen und Familie des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen verfolgten politischen Initiative mit dem Namen "Seniorenwirtschaft". Ihr Ziel ist die Stimulierung des Aufbau von regionalen Netzwerkstrukturen, die sich diesem neuen Markt widmen und Umsetzungsbedingungen und Vermarktungschancen von seniorengerechten Produkten und Dienstleistungen entwickeln und verbessern und dabei unterschiedliche Akteure wie Landesregierung und die Landesseniorenvertretung, Wirtschaft, Gewerkschaften, Handwerk und Wissenschaft umfassen.
Diese Konferenz wird die bisherigen Erfahrungen in den Regionen Europas bei der Entwicklung der Seniorenwirtschaft präsentieren. Ergebnisse eines Best-Practice-Wettbewerbs werden vorgestellt und das "Seniorenwirtschaft Netzwerk der Europäischen Regionen" (SEN@ER) konstituiert und präsentiert sich auf dieser Konferenz. Empirica ist Projektträger dieses Projektes.

IST@home is an IST project with the aim to develop affordable, reliable and flexible technical components enabling broadband video-based services to be delivered into client homes, which also meet the service needs of organisations providing Tele-care, Tele-Assistance and tenant services.