EuroAGE - Innovative Initiatives for the Promotion of Active Ageing in the EuroACE Region

OBJECTIVES: The EuroAGE project aims at fostering autonomous healthy life, mainly in elderly people but also in people with some degree of dependency, through the promotion of innovative initiatives based on information and communication technologies provided by the patterns participating in the project. The project involves Portugal-Spain cross-border cooperation of partners from EuroACE region, a region that covers Centro and Alentejo regions in Portugal, and Extremadura region in Spain, which is a territory in Iberian Peninsula heavily affected by the aging of the population. The research team from ISR - University of Coimbra that participates in the EuroAGE project will demonstrate and validate with elderly people the use of social robots and smart homes as key technologies to promote active and healthy aging, through cognitive, socio-emotional stimulation and physical activity promotion, thus contributing to quality of life enhancement and increased healthy life expectancy, mainly in the elderly population. EXPECTED OUTCOMES: The products and results obtained will be made available to all participating partners, collaborators and their partners, which will allow reaching a number of professional users that can be around 200, applying the knowledge acquired and the practical results to more than 1,000 potential users. The beneficiary group will be professionals of care and quality of life, and users of these professionals, elderly people in general, and in a situation of dependency in particular. These results and products will be obtained from the R & D & I work developed by researchers and research centers belonging to the EuroAGE consortium and will be reflected in the scientific and academic documents necessary to make them available to the scientific and academic community, and to society in general. It is intended to obtain as a result of the project 50 or more academic and scientific documents, such as scientific articles, communications to national and international conferences, technical documents, doctoral theses, manuals, guides, as well as any other type of scientific document that can be published by actors of the science and technology system. PLANNED ACTIVITIES: Activity 1 - This activity will focus on the development and validation of different methodologies and systems for the promotion of the health and well-being of people. Although the applications will focus on a target audience, the elderly, their results will be easily extrapolated to other groups such as people with disabilities or people with special needs. The specific objectives of this activity are: 1) to create methodologies and adequate material for raising awareness of the importance of active aging in the elderly and family members, 2) and promote active aging through the development of physical and cognitive training programs to delay deterioration of the elderly. Activity 2 - This activity will focus on the field of robotics, under the umbrella of a knowledge and infrastructure network that highlights the great potentialities existing in the EuroACE region in terms of social and welfare robotics for the elderly and dependents. The main objective is the capitalization of knowledge in robotic technology existing in the EuroACE region, to enhance its application in social and welfare technologies, especially in the active healthy life of our elders. Activity 3 - This activity aims to create an R & D & I Network for the development of technology and methods for its application in the care and quality of life of people. The main objectives of the activity are: 1) the promotion and increase of innovative activity in the care and quality of life sector, 2) the implementation of a surveillance and recovery service and 3) the creation of synergies public-private through the use of collaborative innovation forums.