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.

The SEN@ER - Silver Economy Network of European Regions is a joint initiative of European regions initiated by the region of North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany).
This European initiative regards the ageing of our society not as a threat but rather as a challenge and an opportunity for regional economic growth and for improving Europe's competitiveness. To realise this, the Silver Economy Network of European Regions (SEN@ER) has been established as a European-wide network of regions to promote the development and marketing of innovative products and services aimed at this new market segment, thereby contributing to regional development and job creation.
The SEN@ER was founded and established by 11 European regions on 18 February 2005 at the first European Silver Economy Conference in Bonn, Germany.

The initiative "Senior Citizens Economy" [Landesinitiative Seniorenwirtschaft NRW] will hold the first European Conference on "Silver Economy in Europe 2005" from 17 to 18 February 2005 in Bonn, Germany.
It is part of the initiative called the "Senior Citizens Economy" started by the Federal State Ministry of Health, Social Affairs, Women and Family of North Rhine-Westphalia. The objective is to stimulate the development of regional networks, which aim at this newly emerging silver economy market, improve the chances for successful marketing and implementation conditions and include different relevant actors ranging from political authorities, associations for the elderly, industry, craft trade, social partners and research.
The conference will present existing experiences in the development of the silver economy in different European regions. Results from a best-practice competition will be presented and the "Silver Economy Network of the European Regions" (SEN@ER) will be constituted and introduced at this event.

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.