Closing Keynote: Ambient Assisted Living [AAL] for Smart Ageing - Challenges and Opportunities
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Abstract
Ambient Assisted Living [AAL] refers to intelligent systems of assistance for a better, healthier and safer life in the preferred living environment and covers concepts, products and services that interlink and improve new technologies and the social environment. Ambient Assisted Living as a concept aims to prolongate the time people can live in a decent way in their own home by increasing their autonomy and self-confidence, the discharge of monotonously everyday activities, to monitor and care for the elderly or ill person, to enhance the security and to save resources.
A new major AAL funding initiative in Europe is motivated by the demographic change and ageing in Europe, which implies not only challenges but also opportunities for the citizens, the social and healthcare systems as well as industry and the European market. Europe, like many other developed parts of the world, is in the middle of a demographic transition which is fundamentally transforming the ways in which our societies are structured and function. Very large numbers of the post-1945 baby boom generation are changing their lives from full-time workers to full-time pensioners, sometimes adopting part-time or flexible work as a transition step. At the same time, medical and health advances promise many years of active life after retirement, whilst the budgetary costs of ageing are set to rise sharply. The numbers of people in work directly contributing to the economy are shrinking both in real and relative terms, and this applies in particular to the care workforce, whilst the human capital the elderly represent and the monetary wealth they possess is increasing. Presented in these terms, the challenges are daunting. Until recently, indeed, most discussion has emphasised the negative implications of ageing, especially the budgetary squeeze and the prospects of a deteriorating quality of life for the rapidly rising number of older people. However, the situation also presents immense opportunities. New forms of social innovation, including imaginative ways for the elderly themselves to use and benefit from their own life experience and talent, as well as participate in re-organising the services they need, can help solve or alleviate many of the problems: one of them is the ICT.
A new major AAL funding initiative in Europe is motivated by the demographic change and ageing in Europe, which implies not only challenges but also opportunities for the citizens, the social and healthcare systems as well as industry and the European market. Europe, like many other developed parts of the world, is in the middle of a demographic transition which is fundamentally transforming the ways in which our societies are structured and function. Very large numbers of the post-1945 baby boom generation are changing their lives from full-time workers to full-time pensioners, sometimes adopting part-time or flexible work as a transition step. At the same time, medical and health advances promise many years of active life after retirement, whilst the budgetary costs of ageing are set to rise sharply. The numbers of people in work directly contributing to the economy are shrinking both in real and relative terms, and this applies in particular to the care workforce, whilst the human capital the elderly represent and the monetary wealth they possess is increasing. Presented in these terms, the challenges are daunting. Until recently, indeed, most discussion has emphasised the negative implications of ageing, especially the budgetary squeeze and the prospects of a deteriorating quality of life for the rapidly rising number of older people. However, the situation also presents immense opportunities. New forms of social innovation, including imaginative ways for the elderly themselves to use and benefit from their own life experience and talent, as well as participate in re-organising the services they need, can help solve or alleviate many of the problems: one of them is the ICT.
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