AAL Smart Ageing Challenge Prize Finalists – CogniWin
- New programme provides cognitive support for older adults at work
- Geneva-based project uses monitoring devices to provide personalised support to older workers to help them feel more confident about working in an increasingly technological environment
Imagine an employee who has been working for your business for 25 years. They know everything about the company and are the person everyone turns to when they have a question. But, this employee is struggling with the computerisation of tasks and is finding it hard to do what they previously found easy. Would you let them go and lose their years of experience and know-how, or would you try and find a way to help them?
Geneva-based project CogniWin has come up with an innovative way of supporting and motivating older adults to stay active and productive at work by providing smart assistance and well-being guidance. Many older adults have bright expectations for an active future and would like to continue managing their work, in an office as a paid activity. However, older adults working in highly computerised environments are often required to increase their capabilities, to acquire new knowledge and to adapt their working wasy to fast emerging new or upgraded software systems and methods.
This requirement, combined with age related cognitive degradations, make older adults feel mentally stressed about remaining at work. Younger colleagues taking up new software applications faster can reduce their self-confidence and make them feel insecure about continuing work in such technological environments. Older adults require special attention and support to mitigate age related cognitive changes and to relieve fears about technological changes in their working environments in order to help them feel more positive about prolonging their stay at work.
CogniWin is easy to install on any computer without requiring any reorganisation of the workplace. The main features include advanced monitoring via an intelligent mouse and eye tracker, a digital learning assistant that provides personalised tips and advice (textual, video, audio) based on the users’ cognitive characteristics, and a well-being advisor that provides personalised advice to help improve the well-being of the subject at work.
Now CogniWin has been shortlisted for the first ever Active and Assisted Living (AAL) Challenge Prize, which is awarding €50,000 for the best product or idea that uses internet connectivity and the Internet of Things (IoT) to empower older adults to achieve the quality of life to which they aspire, socially and independently.
15 entrants from a healthy total of 200 have now been shortlisted for the prize and these finalists will now attend a special Innovation Academy in Brussels in July, where their ideas will be further scrutinised by the judges and where they will also receive advice on how their ideas can be further commercialised for what is a massively growing market.
For more information about Cogniwin, visit: cogniwin.eu or contact project coordinator Professor Dimitri Konstantas