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Closing message

Closing message

Closing speech by Rafael de Andrés Medina,
President of the AAL Association

Your Excellencies:

Flemish Minister Vandeurzen
EC representative, Director Paul Timmers
Ladies and Gentlemen

We are at the farewell edge.It is time to look back and evaluate what we have done and what we have seen in the past three days, here in Ghent.

This year’s Forum went under the title “Aspirations in active ageing. Engaging people, services and technology” with a clear intention to present and debate how the Active and Assisted Living programme can help promoting a better interconnection between individuals and innovation for the growth of a better society, and for better conditions in the third age. I am convinced that all of us will leave Ghent with new and better shaped ideas on what are the solutions for a better quality of life of the older adults within an innovation and social inclusion framework.

  • For the first time, you have enjoyed the great opportunity to pre-arrange your individual meeting with a counterpart you are interested in through the matchmaking online system. We hope you have appreciated this effort that goes towards our goal to offer to you always better and more reasons to come to the AAL Forum every year.
  • We have organized a two-day hackathon geared towards the creation of new ICT applications to improve the quality of life of older adults. During this period, multi-disciplinary teams of care professionals, policy makers and technical experts were grouped together to develop innovative ICT solutions (e.g. mobile applications/games) addressing real-life business cases. And at the end of the hackathon, these solutions were presented to a team of venture capitalists.
  • After the usual long procedure that was carried out by a panel of high level evaluators, and the emotional competition on stage, we have, once again, selected the project that demonstrated the best orientation towards users and closeness to market with the AAL Award. This is a path that we intend to continue in the view of an always pushing our projects to deliver results for society, individuals and market alike.
  • Developed and delivered in partnership with Nesta’s Centre for Challenge Prizes, AAL’s first challenge prize will incentivise innovation. We’ll be seeking out breakthrough solutions that improve the elderly’s quality of life through ICT. And rewarding the applicant who can most effectively meet a defined challenge in the field of Active and Assisted Living.
  • So what’s next? In the coming months we’ll be working with the Centre for Challenge Prizes to scope and design the prize – identifying where innovation is needed and a prize can be most effective. As key stakeholders, we’ll be reaching out to some of you for your feedback and input and we thank you in advance for your help and support. With its design finalised, the prize will launch in January 2016 and we look forward to announcing our winner at the next year AAL Forum.
  • I hope you had a chance to visit the exhibition area. Solutions were showcased by our projects and other interesting information and opportunities were presented by different other partners.

For the first time in the History of Mankind, there are more persons above 65 years old than below 5 years old in the whole world. This is a fact that requires community and personal capital investment. In a holistic vision coping with ageing and demographic change, solutions embedded of technology but not only technology is necessary and the approach should be explicitly complemented by a three dimensions for AAL: market entrance, investments and usability for social innovation and inclusion. “Smart Ageing” should be the new paradigm of individual and social life to face the challenges of an ageing population and demographic change. Our societies need to cope with technical obsolescence and the type of Innovation we need should be Open, Robust and Frugal. There are new demands of intervention, regulation and support. If the technological evolution, especially that of the ICT, is rightly channelled, such progress will – with no doubts – broadly benefits the society. On the contrary, bitter and more confrontational politics and governments will be under attack by angry unemployed workers and resentful rich taxpayers.

It is necessary as a new deal integrating social, economic and political aspects into a new inter-sectorial approach far beyond the silo mentality. AAL Project outcomes´ deployment in the real world is a task to make Europe progress. It should be considered from the project inception.Public-Private-Partnership is necessary. Projects proposals should be drafted with the active cooperation of end users and SMEs and researchers and not sidelining public and private investors: it is essential to be able to attract public and private investment. Public Funders should be sensitive on this matter too and avoid unnecessary barriers. Crowd funding, business angels, venture capital, entrepreneurs as well as regions and municipalities are necessary and have a role to play and they have started to do it already.I still think there is no single model of care or a single model of business across Europe. Our political Europe and the Europe of citizens is based on diversity and that means complexity. But this gives us the opportunity to benchmark experiences that already started to exist.

This is about personal wellbeing and welfare business friendly. ICT, as a disruptive innovation, is part of the solution for “smart ageing” within a framework of innovation driven by end-users needs and friendly to them.Leadership is about society and the way it resolves problems and technology management is a critical component for leadership, but no leadership is long term sustainable just only on technology. There is room for the AAL Programme to contribute to it too. As well as there are lessons to be learnt. With your cooperation and my colleagues´ of the AAL Association we will make our outmost to address these and others challenges.

On behalf of the AAL Association, I express our gratitude to

  • The Flemish Government;
  • The European Commission for its continuous support and funding;
  • The Flemish Agency for Innovation by Science and Technology (IWT) and iMinds;
  • And the Municipality of Ghent.

I am also grateful to the more than 500 participants, xx exhibitors and to the:

  • AAL Partners States and their delegates,
  • the European Commission DG CONNECT.
  • the projects,
  • the industries,
  • the end-users and end-user organisations,
  • the regional participants and
  • the media and other stakeholders.

Let me also thank my colleagues of the AALA Executive Board, the Advisory Board, the National Contact Persons and the staff of the central management unit – in some case with a silent work not always disclosed.A special thanks goes to the Forum Programme Committee for the work done along the last few months in helping to shape and direct the contents of this year edition.Many thanks too to all of you for having contributed to make this a lively great event – your Forum – our Forum. My thanks too to my team at my mother organisation, ISCIII in Spain that supports my work on duty abroad. If something has gone wrong please do not blame anybody, except me. I am responsible for it. No doubt. I hope to meet you next year again at the AAL Forum 2016 hopefully – pending on concluding a final negotiation – in St Gallen, Switzerland, September 27th – 29th.

Dr. Rafael De Andrés Medina,
President of the AAL Association
September 24th, 2015,