Keynote Talk

AAL: The New Paradigm to Deliver and Consume Health Services

Abstract

Among the many strategies (many experimental) that has been launched to address the increase in the proportion of the population aged and older, has emerged in Europe the concept of "Ambient Assisted Living, AAL". Indeed, AAL was conceived as one of these strategies, based on the use of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) to develop and provide applications and services that enable older people to live independently longer and reduce the dependency time. Independent living is a concept that is inevitably associated with health. Moreover, it has been shown that greater independence means less care needs, which also is linked with better housing conditions, and distributed services in environments frequented by these people.

The philosophy behind the concept of AAL is significantly influenced by the paradigm of Ambient Intelligence (AmI), which is based on the idea of integrating a person in an intelligent environment which ensures an active and proactive assistance, at the same time allows a natural interaction with the environment. AAL is a multifaceted concept and is designed to assist people in their homes, communities and workplaces. Assisted ambient intelligence refers to the fact of providing the environment with sensors and sensor networks with the processing capacity to pursue a common strategy and react to a risk or protect the user in an intelligent and coherent way. A key objective of the AAL for the maintenance of the welfare of the person at home, ensuring that the person is safe and is able to function independently. This last argument has attracted significant research effort, possibly due to the perception that maintaining the independence and well-being at home is essential and all other benefits will come from this.

Despite all the promising concepts, and the fact that technology can make them a reality, AAL is still more a vision than a reality. In practice, AAL solutions are still far from being considered as AAL. In the limit of its completion, each user could set the AAL solutions according to his needs, tastes and economic capacity, as they would with the furnishings and equipment in their homes. This calls for standards-based technology platforms that support interoperability between different manufacturers and service providers, distributed in the network. Ultimately, AAL will be configured as an economic and technological ecosystem in which all stakeholders coexist together: users, researchers, technology companies and integrators, service providers, NGOs, social service agencies and public administrations.