• Collective thinking

For ConnectedVitality, the issues they faced were too complex and delicate to solve with a trial and error method – there are around one hundred components of age care strategies that need to be revised when formulating a new stratagem – so instead they opted for a focus group approach; a think-tank comprised of “a consortium of healthcare professionals with a selection of different and brilliant brains”. This consortium helped to generate new ideas and innovative ways of addressing issues of accessibility, usability and differences in dealing with specific problems

• Working in partnership

Robert Smit, the coordinator, has applied an effective consultancy approach in his mission to bring the innovations of ConnectedVitality to the people who need them. Operating on a business-to-business premise, the project is seeking appropriate care organisations to partner in mutually beneficial arrangements. Part of their success has been the empowerment of other healthcare businesses by giving them the tools to assist the elderly that are still employed by providing coping strategies for mental health issues. In the future, Smit wants ConnectedVitality to tackle the issues surrounding memory loss.

• YoooM

The end product of the ConnectedVitality project is YoooM, a specialist digital display that aims to retain the essential elements of communication at a distance. According to its website, “fundamental contact consists of 60% body language, 20% tone and intonation and 20% content.” It supports this by using a large panoramic display, two cameras for a natural multidimensional viewpoint, and an intuitive touch interface to facilitate shared activities.

Main contact

Robbert Smit

Contact: Tel: 0031-614881770
Email: robbert@yooom.com
Web: www.yooom.com

This is how we help projects delivering social innovation!

We, at the AAL Joint Programme, are seriously committed in helping our projects to go to market so that they can deliver for the good of individuals, society and economy. This is social Innovation.

Success Stories 2015 brochure

Success Stories 2016 brochure

• Funding from all avenues

Putting its plans forward to the Copenhagen Living Lab Society in order to take their game to the next level, Express2Connect is seeking to secure funding from a programme called ‘EuroStars’ as the need for stronger commercial industry grows. The scheme already supports SMEs in almost thirty countries (with another five countries awaiting approval) with a combined funding intake of €1.14bn. Express2Connect’s consultancy element is marketed through their book, which will also be published in Taiwan this autumn.

• Know your target market

Jakobsen observes that taking an innovation into a new culture such as Taiwan, brings with it a new set of issues regarding how ageing is dealt with elsewhere in the world. By understanding other cultures, it assists AAL innovations to “frame collaborations with cultures outside our own”.

• Define a challenge – then solve it

“The AAL Programme is special because it has a very specific and defined idea of what a challenge is – something that you seldom see in other European programmes.” Most programmes have a special kind of technology as their starting point, whereas the AAL Programme focuses on challenges. “It is extremely important that you start these small, radical innovations from the point of a challenge,” he explains.

Main contact

Thomas Hammer-Jakobsen
Tel: +4520232205
Email: hamm@copenhagenlivinglab.com
Web: www.copenhagenlivinglab.com

This is how we help projects delivering social innovation!

We, at the AAL Joint Programme, are seriously committed in helping our projects to go to market so that they can deliver for the good of individuals, society and economy. This is social Innovation.

Success Stories 2015 brochure

Success Stories 2016 brochure