Projects on independent living services

The BECA project started in January 2011 and aims to help Europe meet emission targets by achieving a significant reduction of energy consumption in European social housing. Building on existing services providing feedback on energy consumption to social housing tenants, BECA will develop, provide and pilot advanced ICT-based Resource Use Awareness Services (RUAS) and Resource Management Services (RMS). Supported financially by the European Commission under the ICT Policy Support Programme, 18 organisations are cooperating in the project to provide these services directly to social housing tenants. Pilots of BECA services are located at 7 sites in 7 countries:

• Örebro in Sweden,
• Manresa in Spain,
• Darmstadt in Germany,
• Torino in Italy,
• Havirov in the Czech Republic,
• Ruse in Bulgaria, and
• Belgrade in Serbia.

The eSESH project started in March 2010 and addresses the need to reduce energy consumption in European social housing by a very significant amount to meet overall emission reduction targets. 32 partners coordinated by empirica are cooperating in the project to provide ICT-based energy management and energy awareness services directly to social housing tenants. Services will be piloted by more than 5,000 social housing tenants across 10 sites in six European countries.

More information and project website: http://www.esesh.eu/

The project defines, delivers and pilots a digital infrastructure supporting coordinated cross-sector delivery of timely support to prevent older people from slipping out of safe independent living, maintaining quality of life. The infrastructure enables support services to overcome limitations of sectoral telehealth and telecare and empowers informal carers and the voluntary / third sector to participate in delivery of support, thus radically improving efficiency. The innovative new services are piloted at six sites across the Europe. The project brings together 20 organisations across 6 Member States representing all major stakeholders in the "value chain" of support to older people, from public authorities and social and health service providers to global industry players and specialist SMEs.

More information and project website: http://www.independent-project.eu/

CommonWell- Common Platform Services for Ageing Well in Europe The CommonWell project has been launched in October 2008 as part of the EU initiative to promote better quality and more economically efficient solutions for the provision of health and social services and is coordinated by empirica. The CommonWell project aims to support independent living and improve the quality of life for older people and those with long-term conditions.
12 partners are cooperating in the project, supported financially by the European Commission and coordinated by European project consultants Empirica, to deliver ICT-enabled health and social care services in four Member States. The integrated services are to support the effective management of chronic disease, and to address issues which affect independence, such as reduced agility, vision or hearing, in order to significantly improve the quality of life for older people and their families. A total of 400 users across four locations in Europe will receive services for at least twelve months. The results of evaluating the pilot operation will be used to extend service provision and promote the wider uptake of this model of care across Europe.
Milton Keynes (UK) and Eindhoven (NL) are the pilot locations that will initially address chronic disease management for older people suffering from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (in Milton Keynes), and Chronic Heart Failure (in Eindhoven). The CommonWell services will improve communication between health and social care providers, helping to reduce anxiety and improve health outcomes for people with chronic conditions and those who need support when leaving hospital. FASS and Johanneswerk are the sites focussing on improving services for independent living for older people. FASS currently operates the largest centre for social alarm in Europe with over 90,000 clients across Andalusia in Spain. Johanneswerk runs several hospitals, a social alarm service and provides domiciliary care. CommonWell promises to support integrated care delivery in both organisations.
The project is part funded by the EU Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme.

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.