John Waterworth, Department of Informatics, Umeå University: The AGNES project: User-sensitive Home-based Systems for Successful Ageing in a Networked Society

AGNES is a response to the growing number of elderly people living alone in their own homes, but in need of both social and practical support to maintain their daily activities and a good quality of life. Currently, they often suffer the psychological effects of ageing and social isolation - effects which include cognitive decline, mild dementia, low activity levels and poor mood states.

In seeking to address this problem, project brings together 10 partners from six European countries (Sweden, Germany, Austria, Greece, Spain and Italy), comprised of two SMEs, four universities, a consumer electronics company, and three end-user organizations - in Greece, Spain and Sweden (Skellefteå Municipality). Areas of research include ICT and ageing, user-centred innovation, activity detection, emotion/state recognition, social networking, and tangible and ambient interaction. The overall cost of AGNES is around 3.8 million euro, of which almost 2.5 million Euro comes from the new AAL Joint Programme, jointly funded by the EU and national funding agencies in each participating country. AGNES will be coordinated by Umeå University, extending existing research on e-Health and the potential benefits of ICT for older users. AGNES was one of 23 successful projects, out of 117 applications to the first AAL funding call.

The seminar will outline AGNES, and also offer some reflections on the process of making applications for EC funding under such programmes as AAL, FP7 and CIP.

Information on AAL programme: http://www.aal-europe.eu/ Information about Call 1 projects: http://www.aal-europe.eu/Published/pr-docs/flyer-aal-call-1-projects

Välkomna!
Rikard Harr