Felix Piazolo is key researcher and project leader in several national and international research projects such as 2PCS, ExpACT and gAALaxy – the universal system for interconnected living – and will be leading discussions during the workshop on quality of life areas in the AAL eld. As an associate professor at Andrássy University Budapest, and senior researcher and lecturer at the University of Innsbruck, Felix’s experience and work, especially with gAALaxy, means he has a lot of knowledge on delivering unique end-user experiences with AAL solutions and researching the impact of solutions on quality of life without limiting the habits of individuals in everyday life.

The workshop will discuss how AAL solutions in uence various quality of life domains. Firstly, demo AAL scenarios will be presented that use existing AAL solutions combined with smart home solutions and discussed regarding their potential quality of life impact. In the second part of the interactive workshop, participants will develop new scenarios for certain quality of life areas. Findings will be shared and discussed amongst participants on how they could become relevant to future AAL solutions.

Additional speakers: Konstantin Seger – Junior Researcher, University of Innsbruck; Kristina Förster – Researcher, University of Innsbruck; Sonja Vigl – Researcher, Eurac Research; Judith Kathrein – PhD Researcher, University of Innsbruck, Luka Cotelj – Consultant, SIS Consulting GmbH; Ines Simbrig – Researcher, Eurac Research

This workshop will give you a hands-on experience of the ‘value proposition canvas’ tool and will be led by Alain Denis, managing director at Yellow Window. The session will give you the con dence to apply the tool in your own project and build a more customer-oriented and innovative business model. You will apply the tool on ActiveAdvice which is a platform to bridge the gap between offer and demand of AAL products and services. It is an innovative service, creating value through the involvement of three different target groups: consumers, businesses and authorities (government). Groups will be split up into small groups of six participants after initial discussions, where they will be able to share and compare results together.

Additional speakers: Rik Wisselink – Policy Maker, City Alkmaar; Ad van Berlo – Manager R&D, Smart Homes

Lucas Paletta, key researcher and head of Human Factors Lab at JOANNEUM RESEARCH, Austria, will be leading this workshop on dementia, a broad category of neurocognitive disorders that cause long-term decline in the ability to think and remember, but that also involve emotional problems and a decrease in motivation. While the effect of serious games for the cognitive stimulation of people with dementia has been thoroughly tackled, the impact of this motivational support still requires more investigation.

This workshop will look at serious games, assistance in the psychosocial contexts, and substantial increase of activation, awareness, and positive stimulation for people with dementia. Assessment in this context is relevant to make ef cient use of the monitoring of consequences in daily life over longer periods of time. An overview on interdisciplinary expertise will be followed by an open session to enrich information exchange.

Additional speakers: Ernst Koster –Department of Experimental Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium; Liselore Snaphaan – senior scientific researcher, Mental Health Care Eindhoven en de Kempen, The Netherlands; Inge Bongers – Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Tilburg University, The Netherlands; Martijn Niessen – Chief Operating Officer, McRoberts BV, The Netherlands

Christoph Stahl, senior R&T associate from Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, will be leading this workshop. Since the AAL Forum 2013, Stahl has organised many workshops on indoor and outdoor mobility solutions, and is currently working on smart home technologies. Having managed an AAL project on this topic, Stahl fully understands how mobility is a key necessity for older adults to actively participate in social life. Diminished visual, physical and cognitive abilities can cause a loss of confidence and orientation that means people prefer to stay at home.

Stahl, along with the other workshop speakers, will draw upon his own experiences on current research activities on navigational aid and mobility assistance. Looking at their own case studies and projects, speakers will shed light on the methods and analysis models they use to implement mobility solutions. The workshop will then invite participants to contribute to discussions on this broad topic including public transportation services, orientation for indoor environments, and analysis and compensation of gait disorders.

Additional speakers: Christian Mandel – Senior Researcher, German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI); Thibaud Latour – Head of Unit, Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST); Daniel Bieber – Managing Director and Scientific Director, Institut für Sozialforschung und Sozialwirtschaft e.V. (iso-Institut)

Horst Kraemer is a programme officer at the European Commission’s Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, and will be leading this workshop. With a portfolio that includes digital innovation in health and care, age-friendly smart living environments, as well as research and innovation projects in the Horizon 2020 framework, Horst will chair a panel that will hold a discussion on the alignment of strategies and initiatives.

Whilst many European networks are implementing actions on AHA and AAL, there are still challenges ahead. Additional speakers will draw upon their own project experiences and the dif culties they face, to asks questions to participants such as: are AAL solutions adequate for the needs of stakeholders? Is national funding aligned? How can national funding contribute to its implementation on social case and health services? Other areas of the session aim to discuss the gap between top and bottom networks, the corrective measures to follow understanding dif culties, and the path between real user needs and products as a critical factor for the broad implementation of AAL.

Additional speakers: Carina Dantas – Innovation Director, Cáritas Diocensana de Coimbra; Javier Ganzarain – Research Project Officer, AGE Platform Europe; Maddalena Illario – Head of Health Innovation’s Unit, Campania Region; João Oliveira Malva – Research Coordinator, Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra; Alexander Peine – Assistant Professor of Innovation Studies, Utrecht University; Peter Saraga – Chair of the Advisory Board of the AAL Programme

Filipe Sousa is a researcher at Fraunhofer Portugal working in the areas of active and assisted living, information processing, and mobile computing and will be leading this workshop. As value-based care replaces the fee-for-service model under healthcare plans, new innovative solutions start to emerge that can boost the ef ciency of the health system and empower patients to manage their own care. One of growing interest is the “shared savings” approach: if a healthcare system/provider reduces total healthcare expenditures with its patients, then the seller of the application causing this outcome is rewarded part of the savings.

As the coordinator of SmartBEAT, Filipe will be addressing the ‘shared saving model’, the method proposed to sell SmartBEAT and Do Change solutions. In this interactive workshop, participants will discuss the two parameters needed to succeed in doing this: (i) cost savings by reducing hospitalisation, and (ii) health ef ciency in monitoring chronic patients. Following this, the workshop will also look at the nancial innovation ‘health impact bonds’, an instrument to avoid wrong pocket savings in which investors are solely based on outcome performance.

Additional speakers: Ad van Berlo – Manager R&D, Smart Homes; Linda Harnevo – Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer and Director, LifeOnKey Inc.; José Cardoso – Doctor at Department of Cardiology, Centro Hospitalar São João (CHSJ), and Professor at the Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade do Porto (FMUP).

Petra Friedrich (professor at the University of Applied Sciences, Kempten) together with Isabella Hämmerle (research assistant at the University of Applied Sciences Vorarlberg) and Urs Guggenbuehl (co-director of Competence Centre AAL, University of Applied Sciences St. Gallen), will be leading this workshop on new approaches for the assembly, personalisation and individualisation of AAL solutions. They will share some knowledge and experiences and present the rst results of the project IBH Living Lab AAL. IBH is an association of 30 universities around the Lake of Constance.

Participants will be involved in a discussion on three aspects of personalising AAL solutions – the end user, the technology and the implementation – and develop ideas around this subject in a wold café setting. The workshop will start with some key note statements and continue with discussions about the challenges to personalise AAL solutions.

Additional speakers: Guido Kempter – Head of Research Centre, FH Vorarlberg

Gerard van Loon, senior manager of European projects at the National Foundation for the Elderly in the Netherlands and moderator of the workshop, has more than eight years of experience with AAL and other Horizon 2020 projects on active and healthy ageing. Gerard’s main contribution is his engagement with an NGO that encourages and manages involvement of elderly people in the execution of AAL pilot testing sites. Two case studies – the iCare Coops and SOCIALCARE AAL projects – will be discussed, to demonstrate how community-based organisations such as charities, volunteers’ initiatives and cooperatives have a lot of potential in community mobilisation and social innovation.

The workshop will highlight strategies and tools that the two case studies have employed to translate their members’ needs into actions and responses using digital platforms. The goal is to discuss the ways in which technological innovation can effectively catalyse the potential of communities to provide higher-quality care for older people. The workshop will provide its participants with an opportunity to share their experiences in approaches towards fostering community involvement and decreasing social isolation.

Additional speakers: Diotima Bertel – Research Manager, SYNYO GmbH; Louis cousin – Project Officer, Cooperatives Europe; Lenka Christiaens – European Projects Legal Officer, Johanniter International; Stefan Schürz – User Requirements & Testing Pilots Coordinator, LIFETOOL; Marylo Verhagen – European Affairs Officer, National Foundation for the Elderly

The world of connected devices and IoT-based appliances we now live in has led to increased security issues concerning personal information and data management. Simultaneously, the lack of awareness that many older people face when using new technologies and managing personal data represents one of the major issues in the eld of AAL. Leading discussions on this topic is Matteo Zallio, Architect and Research fellow at the Dublin Institute of Technology, Environmental Sustainability & Health, who has experience in developing assistive technologies for older adults and people with disabilities.

The workshop, based on a “senior-centred IoT approach”, deals with four topics that mainly relate to users’ abilities: technology and innovation, usability and interoperability, security and safety and connectivity and smartness.

The workshop, that focuses on state-of-the-art of sensing technologies and ambient intelligence, aims to demystify technology issues, increase the awareness on user experience towards IoT-based devices and improve the understanding on data security management for older adults.

Additional speakers: John McGrory, lecturer in electrical, intelligent automation and process control at the Dublin Institute of Technology

Marina Abed is an advisor and entrepreneur who developed a beta business plan as part of her master’s thesis with the Chair of Technology and Innovation Management at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich (ETH Zürich) for AAL innovators to use to achieve market success when commercialising their products and services. Innovators may miss co-innovation risks and adoption chain risks, arising from partners along the value chain, which may keep great technological advancements from achieving market success. This interactive workshop will promote early adoption of AAL innovations by older adults with a beta business plan.

With Marina’s background, she will chair discussions on the innovation risk framework and apply it to a case study. Dorian Selz, a successful entrepreneur, will be interviewed about his experiences with technology entrepreneurship, what he attributes his success to, and will offer advice to AAL innovators for the promotion of their own projects. Participants will then apply these tools to their own projects by drawing a value blueprint of the ecosystem, identifying key partners, and determining what bottlenecks may hold back their products from reaching the end customer.

From this, different scenarios will be discussed on how to realign key actors in the ecosystem to allow for the better promotion of AAL innovations.

Additional speakers: Dorian Selz

This workshop will be led by Ivan Kjaer Lauridsen, head of health and assisted living technology at the Department of Health & Care, Aarhus Municipality, alongside simon Albertsen who is consultant in the same department. Both work primarily on looking at how to harness the vast amounts of data available in Aarhus Municipality in order to support and improve active and healthy ageing through assistive technology. They will present a business case study of nine technologies tested in a nursing home and the validation processes used to ensure products made it to market.

The management team at the Department of Health & Care used various evaluation methods for studying the effects these technologies have on the economy, quality of life (increased independence) and working environments in a nursing home (and home care). The presentation will discuss these evaluation processes in detail before revealing the results and looking at the bene ts the assisted living technologies had in relation to citizen dignity and the working environment of caregivers. The workshop aims to provide insight into the complete evaluation process, from testing to evaluation, that nally led to the company deciding to implement and invest in the technologies in all nursing homes. The workshop also outlines perspectives for future use of data to create automatic feedback from each technology in order to be able to follow effects regarding self reliability, improved working environment and reduced cost.

Additional speakers: Sonja Hansen, European project officer and fundraiser at the Centre for Assisted Living Technology, Aarhus Municipality

Diotima Bertel is a research manager at SYNYO GmbH, coordinator of the ActiveAdvice European project. SYNYO is an organisation that has extensive research in the eld of AAL projects, smart health and intelligent ageing. With experience across many organisations that focus on user experience and stakeholder requirements, Diotima’s contribution to the workshop will be fundamental, and together with other speakers she will provide inputs on an in- depth study on the challenges associated with integrating the interests of three stakeholder groups: clients, businesses and governments.

Whilst it is agreed that user-centred design (UCD) and participatory design are required approaches in R&D for AAL solutions, the workshop will draw upon the results and work developed from the project ActiveAdvice to highlight how R&D in this eld faces numerous challenges that need to be dealt with in order to favour the adoption of solutions. The interactive workshop will aim to gather insights from the challenging experiences AAL researchers have faced and discuss approaches to perform usability tests with older adults to help build comprehensive guidelines on how to make the process of UCD easier in AAL projects.