The demographic change in an ageing Europe will lead to massive changes in the health care sector, in living arrangements of older people and in the development of support systems. Researchers, policy planners, health care professionals and many other professions have started to develop, test and implement new technologies to support older people to maintain their independence.

Several calls of the European Commission have stimulated the cooperation of researchers across different countries to develop new technologies for ambient assisted living (AAL). Projects participating at this symposium have regional consortium partners in Baden-Württemberg and have started their activities in 2007. The aims of these projects differ considerably from a broad approach for system integration to problem oriented approaches to solve specific problems that threaten the independence of older people. The SensAction-AAL project (Sensing and Action to support mobility in Ambient Assisted Living) has successfully developed and tested technology for telemedicine (long-term monitoring), telerehabilitation (biofeedback training) and telecare (fall detection). We invite health care planners, engineers, computer scientists as well as health care professionals and other stakeholders to interact at the symposium and get a flavour of recent advances and future challenges to enable a successful ageing of seniors in Europe.

Prof. Lorenzo Chiari (University of Bologna, Italy) &
PD Dr. Clemens Becker (Robert-Bosch-Hospital, Germany)