InicioInvestigaciónProyectosIN LIFE Project

IN LIFE Project

Proyectos

IN LIFE concept is to address the challenge of turning existing research efforts to reality for real people across Europe.

Existing flexible ICT solutions could assist elderly users with cognitive impairment in organising, carrying out and completing everyday tasks and constitute essential factors for continuing to be and feel independent. IN LIFE will offer all-around, personalised, multi-faceted existing ICT solutions and services addressing diverse daily activities (eating, physical activity, commuting, mental stimulation, communication, social interaction, etc.) to users with cognitive impairment living in their own home or in sheltered homes, as well as to their formal and informal carers.

Emphasis is placed on elderly and carer interactions, communications and care scheduling and monitoring.

The main targeted user groups are:

1. Older people with:

Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI)
Early and later stages of Dementia
Cognitive impairment and co-morbid condition

2. Caregivers (formal and informal)

The main IN LIFE innovation stems from the implementation of ICT-based services into a large scale pilot platform.

There are six IN LIFE pilot sites: Greece, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands, UK.

All sites will cover holistically multiple services for elderly citizens with different kind of cognitive impairment, but each will have different focus areas and diversity in ICT solutions offered.

All sites are running strong AAL research activities, thus allowing IN LIFE to benefit from existing infrastructures.

Further, they represent six different countries, and can all accommodate piloting of more than 150 elderly users with cognitive impairments each, during the course of the project (totally over 1,200 users in all sites, plus roughly 1,100 carers).

IN LIFE will therefore target a good spread of test participants in terms of age, family status, socioeconomic status, location and ethnicity.

Link:

http://www.inlife-project.eu/

Objectives

The project aims to prolong and support the independent living of seniors with cognitive impairments, through interoperable, open, personalised and seamless ICT solutions that support home activities, communication, health maintenance, travel, mobility and socialisation tasks, with novel, scalable and viable business models, based on feedback from large-scale and multi-country pilot applications.
The project’s aim is approached through the following objectives:

To connect a wide range of adaptable ICT solutions for elderly with various cognitive impairments, into a common open reference architecture, to allow their interconnection and enhance their interoperability.
To instantiate applications, services and business models to different geographical and sociocultural backgrounds, user group types (i.e. early dementia, moderate dementia, etc.), as well as lifestyles (i.e. living at home alone or with spouse, living at elderly home, traveling, etc.).
To provide tools and systems for services adaptation and personalization, to meet the different needs and wants of each individual in a dynamic way, allowing services to evolve together with the users’ health and condition.
To provide tools and instruction to carers of people with cognitive impairments and/or dementia in order to support communication and functioning in daily life.
To estimate the return of investment of the different business models and connected services through pilots in 6 sites Europewide (North: UK, Sweden; Central: The Netherlands; South: Spain, Greece; East: Slovenia) and highlight best practices for relevant viable business and financial models for their uptake and instantiation per region and market.
To issue key guidelines on the proper and ethical application of the proposed business models, to guarantee the respect of users’ wants, lifestyle, personal data and personal beliefs.
To study the scalability and sensitivity of the tested business models and cases and provide guidelines on their optimal application in different financial, sociocultural and healthcare contexts.

Resultados

The primary and most significant impact of IN LIFE will be of societal nature, focusing on the Quality of Life of the elderly citizens with cognitive impairment and on the advancement of their care. Specifically:

Physical Well-Being: IN LIFE greatly contributes to the protection of the physical health and well-being of the elderly citizens with cognitive impairment, through the health services offered and the potential for early detection when there is a need for interventions.
Psychological Well-Being: IN LIFE contributes to the early recognition and effective mitigation of a number of ageing-related psychological risks which can eventually lead to physical and mental decline.

Emphasis is on services to promote Independent Living and Autonomous Mobility.

Social Interaction: IN LIFE supports social interaction and integration of elderly citizens with a new service for social networking and by improving community access through optimized personalized interfaces and tools in order to easily get in contact with family, friends, and community.

Availability of Affordable Advanced Services: The basic concept behind the user profiling, user clustering and modelling of IN LIFE is to support each individual to select which services he/she would like to be combined and even to be tailored to his/her preferences.

Consorcio

The project includes 20 partners from 9 EC countries. The Consortium is constituted by 7 Research actors (4 Universities and 3 Research Organisations), 7 Industrial partners (from mainstream industry, such as MLS, BYTE and VIRTUALWARE to highly specialised actors in the elderly services market, such as RRD and OPEN EVIDENCE, including an AT Association – AAATE) and 6 Service providers (mainly from the healthcare sector). Thus, it represents all actors in a balanced way and it actually pairs all types of actors at each pilot site.