Smart and Healthy Ageing through People Engaging in Supportive Systems

Throughout Europe, many people are handicapped by reduced capabilities that are either permanent or temporary. The EU-funded SHAPES project (https://shapes2020.eu/), which is formed by 36 partners across 14 countries, aims to create the first European open Ecosystem enabling the large-scale deployment of a broad range of digital solutions for supporting and extending healthy and independent living for such older individuals. SHAPES builds an interoperable platform integrating smart digital solutions to collect and analyse older individuals’ health, environmental and lifestyle information, identify their needs and provide personalised solutions that uphold the individuals’ data protection and trust.

The SHAPES Pan-European Pilot Campaign is about to engage over 2000 older individuals, care givers and care service providers in 36 pilot activities conducted in 15 pilot sites across 11 European Countries, including five EIP on AHA Reference Sites.

The pilot activities are involving hundreds of key stakeholders to address the pressing needs of older individuals, as well as the requirements of Health &Care systems, and bring forward solutions to improve the health, wellbeing, independence and autonomy of older individuals, while enhancing the long-term sustainability of H&C systems in Europe.

Following a methodology approach that considers a timeframe of 24-months, each pilot activity will run in cycles of co-creation and co-design, moving then to the co-experimentation, the co-deployment, and the co-execution, which will all be jointly evaluated.

Vicomtech, an applied research centre specialized in digital technologies located in San Sebastian, contributes with its experience in the field of natural language processing, artificial vision, Big Data systems and artificial intelligence to collaborate in the development of the SHAPES Technological Platform, as well as a set of digital solutions for the elderly to be validated in the project.