ACTIVE AND ASSISTED LIVING PROGRAMME ICT for ageing well 
Palette V2 is co-funded with AAL Program funds.
The Active and Assistive Living (AAL) programme funds projects in public-private partnership in the field of information and communication technology (ICT) for active and healthy ageing since 2008. The programme is co-financed by the European Commission.
The overall objective of AAL is to enhance the quality of life of older adults while strengthening the industrial base in Europe through the use of ICT. Since 2008, AAL has issued 7 calls for proposals each focusing on different issues and has funded 154 trans-national innovations projects with over 1000 partners.
The topics covered by the programme include management of chronic conditions, social inclusion, access to the self-serve society, mobility of older adults, management of daily activities, support from informal carers (e.g. family and friends) and occupation in life.
PROJECT PARTNERS
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1. University Hospitals of Geneva HUG Project coordinator: Frederic Ehrler E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. |
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HUG provides primary, secondary, tertiary and outpatient care for the whole region with 45 000 inpatients and 850 000 outpatient visits a year. It has a very long culture of using electronic patient record. Its Clinical Information System (CIS) is largely an in-house-developed system. It is a service-oriented and component-based architecture with a message-based middleware. It is written in Java with J2EE and open frameworks. All exchanges are in SOAP or HTTP/XML [5, 6]. All component building blocks of the CIS, are built in such a way that they comply as far as possible with standards, such as IHE (Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise) profiles, so that they are not dependent on any local legacy system. This includes technical, semantic and human-machine interfaces, such as using a terminology server for the language of the interfaces. Being located in a hospital authorizes a privileged access to clinical data, caregivers and to experts specialized in both medical process and CIS. The access to clinical data facilitates the extensive testing of our design in a realistic and large scale framework. Additionally, it is more straightforward to enroll caregivers to set up the usability experiments.
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Contact person: Marius Preda E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. |
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SIVECO Romania SA, large company established in 1992, has become one of the most important Romanian providers and software integrators of Enterprise Resource Management License and Maintenance, eLearning, eGovernment, eHealth, eBusiness, eAgriculture, eCustoms solutions and turnkey projects, acting both on the internal and international markets. SIVECO has developed and implemented solutions for improving the management of the health insurance funds and for increasing the quality of medical and pharmaceutical services: The National Health Insurance House (CNAS) in Romania - Unique Integrated Information System for managing the activities within CNAS; The Ministry of Health in Bulgaria - the implementation of an integrated information system for the National Health Insurance Fund in Bulgaria (NHIF); Nepenthes Group France (Concentrateur Global Nepenthes) - a system for managing the invoices flow between the French Health Ministry and the health insurance houses; The Ministry of Health in Croatia (HZZO) - a pilot information system for centralizing of data supplied by all the doctor’s cabinets in Croatia. SIVECO Romania SA is involved as technological partner in the following European Projects: MEDIATE – Collaborative and interMEdiating solution including formal and informal carers for the Management of Daily Activities for The Elderly at home; LetItFlow – Active Distributed Workflow System for Elderly; ProMe - PROfessional InterGenerational Cooperation & Mentoring; (AAL - Ambient Assisted Living Joint Programme); HealthEveryday - Mobile environment for healthcare services and health education for a better life of NMD'patients (EUREKA); Eurocancercoms (FP7) - Establishing an efficient network for cancer communication in Europe; Linked2Safety (FP7) - A Next-Generation, Secure Linked Data Medical Information Space For Semantically-Interconnecting Electronic Health Records and Clinical Trials Systems Advancing Patients Safety In Clinical Research; ACGT (FP6) - Advancing Clinico-Genomic Clinical Trials on Cancer, coordinated by ERCIM (the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics); P.CEZANNE (FP6) - Integration of Nano-Biology and ICT to Provide a Continuous Care and Implantable Monitoring System for Diabetic patients and GUARANTEE - A Guardian Angel for the Extended Home Environment (ITEA2).
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Contact person: Joost Thissen E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. |
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From 1993 on Reflexion has gathered experience and expertise on the integration and social inclusion process of disadvantaged, unemployed people. Our second field of expertise covers innovative learning methods, including the digital portfolio and well accessible web based tools. The overall aim of our work in this area is to promote adequate professional education, employment and entrepreneurship for disadvantaged people (with a medical, social, economic or other background). Our third field of interest is healthy and active ageing of the elderly, for which aim we engage in research projects and the actual development and implementation of solutions. Reflexion supports employment and healthcare services, also by helping their (elderly) clients to use online tools and services to find and access courses and to find and apply for jobs. Reflexion supports specifically: job seekers in the upper age parts of the labour market, people with disabilities, long-term unemployed people, immigrants, women re-entering the labour market, young school leavers and other groups threatened with exclusion.
In recent years Reflexion has put more emphasis and increased it's efforts to develop web based, online and interactive tools to empower people in disadvantaged positions, assisting them to (again) seize control over their career and social life, including senior citizens.
Our labour market research and development actions focus on supporting and coaching methods, tools and activities, leading to full personal empowerment, social inclusion and active participation of our target groups in all sectors of social and cultural life.
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4. Poznań Supercomputing and Networking Center PSNC Contact person: Michał Kosiedowski E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. |
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PSNC is an ICT research institute which focuses, among others, on designing, developing and verifying ICT applications supporting solving of societal challenges. The latter is possible thanks to the living lab facility maintained by PSNC as the FutureLab, which not only provides advanced laboratory infrastructure, but also serves as a center of organization of multidisciplinary communities targeting the aforementioned challenges. FutureLab and the network of partners grouped around it, have been used by PSNC in previous AAL projects, such as for example Fit4Work (AAL Programme), Helps (Central Europe Programme) or SelFind (national Social Innovations Programme).
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5. The Prava Poteza Institute PPI Contact person: Tanja K. Stjepanović E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. |
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Institute Prava poteza is a small research and development organisation (established in 2005) focused on state-of-the art ICT based solutions for complex user centric systems joining multiple stakeholders from the health, social and education field. Prava poteza works with a network of creative and technically skilled professionals in research, business, public and private organizations. Their expertise and adaptable knowledge is based on decades of experience in development of technology - supported ICT projects in different contexts involving end-user experience and requirements. Among more than 20 international projects (references are listed on their website), financed also by EU funds, in which they have been involved as partners or outsourced to, the most relevant for this application are: system development for already mentioned projects SUB-SCRIPT and Create-IN, evaluation of and international ACTtrain project (“Accessible web-based and interactive video-supported skills transfer”, focused on training, employment, and social inclusion) for Institute for Public health, management of project office for Model Practices (awarded new approach to general health practice organisation) under the Ministry of Health (2011-2013) and close liaison with the professional world and the design world of medical and healthcare institutions (Medical centre of Ljubljana, Slovenian Ministry of Health, National Institute for public health, Slovenian Institute for Rehabilitation) in which all the most influential associates and partners of their expertise (better living conditions and healthcare) in Slovenia. Throughout the years of Prava poteza’s existence, with its continuous operations it has provided not only technical - ICT related development also administrative support in the areas of business competencies, business development, e-learning, e- health and general management.
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6. VILANS Contact person: Henk Herman Nap E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. |
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VILANS is the national Centre of Expertise for Long-term Care in the Netherlands. In this field, VILANS engages in innovation, research and development, dissemination, and implementation of good practices. VILANS primarily works for professionals and care providing organisations in long-term care, primary care, social care organisations of volunteers in this field, user organisations, SMEs, health care insurers and authorities at local, provincial, national, and EU level. VILANS is mainly funded by the Dutch government. VILANS is well-known in the Netherlands for running large scale and nationwide implementation programs, such as the National Dementia Program (in which in 90% of the Dutch regions integrated care networks were set up), the Care for Better Program (around 700 organisations participated in this quality improvement program) and Up to Care! (more than 300 long-term care organisations are currently being transformed to become more sustainable organisations). The exploitation purposes are to achieve a higher level of knowledge and experience, also for the 300 care organizations that are involved in training programmes of VILANS, and the large network of SMEs in the field of eHealth and domotics. Exploitation of the results means that SMEs, as well as user and care organisations will make use of the PALETTEV2 findings. Furthermore, VILANS will integrate the knowledge and results of PALETTEV2 in new courses for education and training. Finally, the project results will strengthen VILANS’ image in The Netherlands and Europe as expert centre of long-term care and eHealth. VILANS’ end user group will further grow and build experience with results from this project. Dissemination will be done via many channels: its own newsletters, websites, and knowledge portals (‘kennispleinen’). Furthermore, VILANS is involved in multiple journal and conference papers on the topic of long-term care and eHealth. Exploitation and demonstration activities will focus on the SME and care sector in the Netherlands. VILANS has participated in several EU projects, as a scientific director (CARMEN, FP 5) and as participants in INTERLINKS and PROGRESS, and as an evaluation WP leader in the AAL Happy Walker project.
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Contact person: Ad van Berlo E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. |
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Smart Homes is the only expert centre on smart home technology and smart home living in the Netherlands. This includes areas like eHealth, Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) and also energy management. Founded in 1998, Smart Homes acts as an independent and intermediary organization in the complex market of technology for a better quality of life. Our main focus is on bridging the worlds of technical developments and those of end-users and service providers. The multidisciplinary team of Smart Homes has in-depth expertise in the fields of ICT, human technology interaction, gerontology, electrical and mechanical engineering, marketing, exploitation, energy management, and industrial design.
Smart Homes participates and participated in IP projects on ambient assisted living – among others - NETCARITY, SOPRANO (FP6) and CompanionAble (FP7). Furthermore Smart Homes is involved in projects funded under the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) named CommonWell, Independent, ReAAL, SmartCare, STOPandGO, and CAALYX-MV. Finally Smart Homes is involved in one STREP (Specific Targeted Research Projects) project named Mobiserv and one Coordination Actions (CA) called CARDIAC. Furthermore, Smart Homes participated in the LEAGE project (EU Lifelong Learning Programme). Most of these projects deal with context aware software based services, built around many different sensors and smart technology in the house.
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Contact person: Rachel van Berlo E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. |
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KempenLIFE is a young cooperation of older citizens from the Kempen area, wanting to gain control over and organise services for comfort, welfare and care with the help of (innovative) technology and ICT... De Kempen’, the outer area south-west of Eindhoven encompassing 5 municipalities and inhabited by 85.000 people, will be used as an ‘living lab’, where new services can be tested and facilitated. Characteristic is that ageing has extra effects in 'de Kempen' because the children of many large farmer families are among or above retiring age. KempenLIFE plays a role in collecting and developing knowledge, know-how and coordinating involvement of industry, local parties and citizens in order to enhance the liveability of de Kempen in particular, but also hoping to contribute in this way to the liveability of rural environments in general. KempenLIFE is convinced the use of technology and ICT can offer opportunities for citizenship and participation in remote, secluded areas.
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Contact person: Aurelia Curaj E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. |
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The University of Bucharest has various faculties and one of them is the Faculty of Sociology and Social Assistance. Under the present scheme of the Faculty, there are classes which provide information about how to take care and understand an elderly person in today’s society. The classes are conducted by Dr.Phd.Aurelia Curaj, and her domain is still the same as in Geron Foundation: the elderly people domain. In a certain way, the University of Bucharest and the classes conducted by Dr. Curaj, are preparing students to be professional assistants for seniors.