Fraunhofer IESE Leading European Assisted Living Consortium

Main Category: Seniors / Aging
Also Included In: IT / Internet / E-mail
Article Date: 25 Feb 2007 - 0:00 PDT

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In the context of the project Emergency Monitoring and Prevention (EMERGE) funded by the European Union, the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering IESE together with other European partners is developing approaches and solutions to extend the time that elderly people can live a self-determined life in their own homes. The project started on 01 February 2007 and has a duration of 33 months.

Fraunhofer IESE is the main coordinator of EMERGE. As an applied research institute, it contributes its competencies in the area of assisted living for elderly people from other software and systems development projects. The institute's Assisted Living Lab as a realistic test environment will play an important role in testing and integrating prototype solutions. In addition, field tests are planned in nursing homes and assisted living institutions in Germany and Greece in order to collect practical experiences.

As partners of Fraunhofer IESE, eight other research institutions and industrial companies from Germany (Westpfalz-Klinikum GmbH, Kaiserslautern; Siemens AG; Microsoft European Innovation Center), Switzerland (Art of Technology), Austria (Medical University of Graz), Greece (NCSR "Demokritos", e-ISOTIS), and Hungary (Bay Zoltan Foundation) are participating in EMERGE. Their contributions will include technical developments as well as holistic approaches for health assistance for the elderly.

The goal of the project is to recognize emergency situations at home with the help of ambient and unobtrusive technology, and to provide adequate assistance, if needed. In addition to technical solutions, models for complete systems will be developed, which include the personal environment as well as recorded sensor data, and which can be custom-tailored to the needs of an individual.

The project will be funded with 2.45 million euros for 33 months in the context of the Sixth Research Framework Program of the European Union (grant number IST-2005-2.6.2 045056). The project partners will contribute a total of 1.5 million euros.

FRAUNHOFER-INSTITUT FUER EXPERIMENTELLES SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
Fraunhofer-Platz 1
http://www.iese.fraunhofer.de