Welcome to Odense

Dear guests and participants of the AAL Forum2010

It is with thegreatest of pleasure that I, as Mayor of the city of Odense,welcome you to AAL Forum 2010 in Odense.We are greatly honoured tohave been chosen to host this year’s conference. We consider theconference to be pivotal to the short and long term development ofnew business areas and new cross-sectoral cooperation to supportpublic and private initiatives aimed at meeting the challengesfacing the care-sectors in the coming years.To have been chosen ashosts proves to me that the unrelenting efforts, with which wepursue the ambitious objectves to which we have committed ourselvesin relation to welfare technologies, are coming to fruition – and Ihave high expectations for the future developments in thisfield.

The city council in Odense has allocated DKK 20 mill. to initialtesting and implementation of welfare technologies. We have alreadyinitiated several projects e.g. in the Department for Elderly andDisabled Citizens. The use of GPS in relation to citizens sufferingfrom dementia has already been implemented and tests with vacuumingrobots have proven so successful that we are now in the process ofimplementing these in our elder care sector.

Welfare technologies are a major part of the developmentstrategies for Odense as well as for the whole of the Region ofSouthern Denmark. Our scope covers the entire Triple Helix ofprivate enterprises, the public sector and research anddevelopment. We look very much forward to presenting our visionsand results as regards strategies and development of welfaretechnologies, and to learning more from your experiences andexpertise, in your capacity as pioneers, end-users, politicians,product developers and established experts in the field of welfaretechnologies.

While in Odense, I hope that you will take the opportunity tosee more of our city. Odense is known as the city for cyclists witha total of 510 km of bicycle paths and state-of-the-art facilitiesfor cyclists. Our efforts in this field have won internationalacclaim and we are proud to have been chosen to present our resultsand visions at the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai. While you are here,why not make time for a bicycle trip to see the full scope of whata city for cyclists can offer first hand?