Active and Assisted Living (AAL) is a highly dynamic field with a wide range of solutions available to improve active and independent living of older adults and persons with handicaps. Yet, there is no comprehensive information and advisory solution available for AAL, supporting consumers, businesses and governments in their AAL investments. The ActiveAdvice Project has set out to tackle this issue, building a novel European digital and human advisory environment for AAL. ActiveAdvice therefore will foster AAL uptake through a novel two-fold approach, building a digital advisory solution and setting up an international network of human advisors.
A Novel Digital Advisory Concept
The digital ActiveAdvice solutions built within the next years support AAL consumers, businesses and governments by providing information on current AAL trends, available solutions across Europe and first hand expert knowledge. Cooperatives can employ ActiveAdvice to identify technologies easing and enabling provision of new care services. Furthermore, established cooperatives can contribute their services to the ActiveAdvice environment, enriching the community-based service catalogues. Through continuous expansion of information service modules, user-generated reviews and ratings as well as up-to-date solution catalogues, all users are constantly supported in meaningful ways to get the AAL solution suiting to their needs.
A Network of Human Advisor
Atop the digital solutions, forming the second strand of ActiveAdvice, a network of Authorized Active Advisors will be established all across Europe. This network, empowered by the digital solutions and specifically trained for the AAL field, care and assistive technologies, is capable of providing first hand expert knowledge on AAL to all interested parties. Again, care cooperatives can engage in ActiveAdvice in two ways: On the one hand, cooperatives can seek expert advisors within the platform, in order to get support for creating new AAL services for the cooperative service portfolio. On the other hand, cooperative members can become Authorized Active Advisors themselves, spreading know-how and expert knowledge about AAL among other members of the coop.
Building Communities and Networks
Through active engagement in ActiveAdvice, new care services and models can be shaped in a community approach, enriching the European care sector. Care cooperatives become essential players in this Europe-wide AAL network, able to deliver high quality services and advisory to AAL consumers, businesses and governments, as they engage within the ActiveAdvice environment. Furthermore, the local success stories of care cooperatives can be spread within the ActiveAdvice environment, generating incentives for implementing AAL and care cooperatives across Europe and the world, while attracting new members and supports for the coop.
The ActiveAdvice Team
The ActiveAdvice project is coordinated by SYNYO, collaborating with ZHAW (which is also part of the iCareCoops consortium), Smart Homes, Cybermoor Services, City of Alkmaar, Yellow Window and University of Porto. The consortium is composed of universities, SMEs and municipalities, in order to tackle the challenges identified for the ActiveAdvice project. Furthermore, an international Expert and Advisory Board provides essential inputs on the project outcomes.
Have Your Say
Even though ActiveAdvice is still in the project phase, the ActiveAdvice network is already open for you to actively engage in it. Follow ActiveAdvice on Twitter, check the materials distributed on our project website and tell us what you expect from ActiveAdvice! What information is important to you? What questions on AAL and care solutions are still open and need an answer?
