Gerhard Finking, AAL President, greeted the participants welcome and gave a short review and explained about the background and the need of the workshop – to identify specific AAL related needs in Regions and if there are  gaps in technology, to fill identified needs, the AAL programme could be a vehicle to develop such technologies. Use cases could be a very important approach to technology development, developing systems  and dissemination of solutions.Another aim with the workshops is exchange of information and to learn from each other about best practices.

Tommy Holm, Head of Office, Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SALAR), greeted the participants welcome, as the local host. TH gave an overview about the SALARs priorities in relation to EU and highlighted e.g. work on Climate change and Energy, Business and Jobs, Elderly demographics, Cross-border Care and Patient safety.

Robert Rönström, Committee of the Regions (CoR), gave an overview of the work by CoR and highlighted the role of CoR in the preparatory work of new EU laws where CoR has to give its opinion, represented by the politicians in the regions. He referred to a new report “How to promote Ageing Well in Europe”. Presently, CoR has 380 members and six committees, including “Commission for Economic and Social Policy”. Robert Rönström informed about the CoR meeting 18 November 2009 in Brussels and the Round Table about “dealing with the impact of an ageing population” and invited AAL to participate in the meeting.

From the Kent Region in UK, Hazel Price gave a presentation about the ongoing developing work with telehealth & telecare programmes in Kent. Kent is very active in these fields with own initiatives and also participating (managing part of) in the large UK telehealth & telecare programme “Whole System Demonstrator, WSD”. Kent suffers, as many (most...) other regions from no or scare integration between social services and health services which was evidenced in these projects. The GP (General Practitioners) were the key stakeholders in Kent to get the WSD prepared and up and running and they were very supportive. WSD is also a trial including several university team for assessments. WSD is currently the largest randomized such trial worldwide including in total about 6000 patients. Results are expected during next year.

From Province Noord-Brabant, NL, Edvin Mermans gave a presentation about the “Smart Care” programme with a budget of 9m€ over three years. The programme has mainly two aims, to be a base for knowledge building and a catalyst for developments and change in the context of demographic ageing and to support industry and business in the region. At the moment about 10 ICT based projects are ongoing and a second call for proposals is in plan.

Josep Roca, Catalonia Region, Spain, evidenced that a lot of developing work was done in the health/healthcare sector during the latest years, and now a lot of developing work is starting up in the social sector. In this scenario, e.g. there is a need for a “at-home” nurse - and new training is needed accordingly. In Catalonia, about 1000 patients is receiving oxygen therapy at home.

Pietro Siciliano, Puglia Region, Italy, informed that the “Italian AAL Association” is being established with the aim to “coordinate and bring together competence and stakeholders in the field of AAL”.

A discussion included topics like:

• “What is stopping the up-scaling of good AAL projects/results”?
• Projects/results have to demonstrate Return of Investments   
• Health/healthcare are better organised than social care
• Difficult to integrate health/healthcare with social care
• New roles for “at-home” nurses – new training is needed

Finally, Gerhard Finking invited the participants to respond in writing to the following ten questions – which will be taken as input for planning of future workshops:

1. How can regions learn from each other?
2. What are the AAL related problems and user needs? How could they be transformed into input for necessary  technology developments and also as input to AAL call development.
3. How can regions give input to the AAL programme?
4. How can regions influence AAL call for proposals?
5. Should we continue with use-cases or not?
6. How can we organise participation of policy makers?
7. How can we improve information on new technologies and available AAL solutions?
8. How can information be exchanged between regions – should AAL provide a web based platform as a permanent tool for communication and information exchange ?
9. Should the current workshop group be extended – if so, how?
10. Should the present group receive a more permanent structure as an accompanying  activity, financed by AAL  for regional cooperation ?

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