Following our Call for Workshops 2023, which aimed to generate ideas for workshops that are of value to the community, we are pleased to announce that we have given the green light to three new workshops, making that 7 in total.

Earlier this year, we asked you to send over proposals for workshops that focused on stimulating the sharing of knowledge and/or lessons among AAL partners and other relevant stakeholders.

We would like to thank all of you who sent in a proposal for a workshop, and we are happy to now be able to confirm which of these proposals were successful. Read on to find out more about the upcoming workshops and summaries of the workshops that have already taken place.

Remote HealthCare Workshop

Date: 20 November 2023

Location: National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens, Greece

Organisers: DOCTORSHELLO

The goal of this workshop was to equip healthcare professionals with the necessary skills and knowledge to effectively provide remote healthcare monitoring services using DoctorsHello telemetry technology at the point of care.

Targeting elderly populations in urban areas, participants learned how to leverage telemetry tools and techniques to ensure accurate and reliable remote patient monitoring, enabling them to deliver high-quality care and improve patient outcomes.

Physical attendees had the opportunity to put their hands on the real technologies and equipment and run real scenarios in the parallel exhibition.

By the end of the workshop, participants gained a comprehensive understanding of telemetry technology and its application in remote healthcare monitoring. They are now better prepared to deliver quality point-of-care services, leveraging telemetry tools to enhance patient care, safety, and satisfaction.

Find out more here.

Technology for co-working on health and active life

Date: Early 2024

Location: Online

Organisers: KOHS

The subject of the workshop is to bring together researchers and practitioners of several disciplines working on concepts to enable the transition of European societies towards healthy and active life. The workshop concept is designed as a primer for a new format of collaboration.

Healthcare systems in Europe are in transition. Integration of innovative processes in primary care, competence improvement strategies and the use of technology will be the key for this change.

Together with partners in research and practice, KOHS has being developing a new format of interdisciplinary collaboration. The idea is to foster activities in communities of healthcare, ergonomics, occupational health, and technology research. First trials have been performed at the ConTEL conference (organised by TU Graz) in combination with a CEEPUS summer school.

Topics of the workshop will be actual demands in health care (secondary users), applications of technology to meet these demands, technology (focusing on open platforms and open source), integrated processes to enable co-working on health of primary users and the health of healthcare workers, and challenges for healthcare organisations and occupational health (tertiary users).

Particularly welcome to the workshop are people active in healthcare, ergonomics, occupational health, and technology research interested in working on integrated processes and integrated pathways in social systems.

Embedding Responsible Innovation into R&D practices

Date: September 2024

Location: Online

Organisers: Dirk Lukkien & Henk Herman Nap

The Responsible Innovation (RI) approach aims to transform R&D into being more anticipatory, inclusive, reflective, and responsive. Despite success of the RI discourse in academic and policy fields, research indicates that digital care innovators’ awareness about ethical implications and ways to address them is limited.

In this workshop, we facilitate a collective reflection on opportunities and challenges to embedding RI into R&D practices in the AAL domain. In doing so, we draw on insights gained through participatory action research in the previous AAL project ‘GUARDIAN’ (2020-2023), which was conducted with the multidisciplinary R&D team to collectively explore and address opportunities for RI within the project.

In this workshop, participants are facilitated to reflect on opportunities to address RI within their own AAL projects. We challenge participants to think about RI as an integral part of R&D tasks such as co-design, technical development, field testing and commercialisation of AAL technologies. Secondly, we deliberate on barriers that may complicate this process, and how these barriers can be addressed in the future by R&D teams, funders, and other stakeholders.

This workshop is relevant for all those who participate in R&D projects and aspire to foster RI (from) within these projects. This includes project coordinators, engineers, co-design specialist, end-user organisations, etc. In addition, this workshop is also relevant for (representatives of) R&D funding bodies and national contact points, since embedding RI into R&D practices (and addressing barriers that complicate this process) requires reciprocity between different actors such as R&D teams, funders, and users.

Find out more here

New innovative design principles for involvement of frail and impaired older people in development and implementation of health technology

Date: April 2024

Location: International Conference on Integrated Care 2024, Belfast

Organisers: Lars Kayser and Emilie Kauffeldt Wegener

The aim of this in-person workshop is to discuss and develop new principles for the design of health technology and services for older people with physical or mental impairments. We will share knowledge and data from a research project between the EU and Canada and further develop design guidelines to involve older people in the design and implementation of health technology.

Two themes will be addressed:

• Inclusion and stratification of users using the ‘Readiness and Enablement Index for Health Technology (READHY)
• How the ‘Epital Care Model’ can inform horizontal and vertical infrastructure in the development of an ecosystem

Policymakers, practitioners, clinicians are all welcome

Find out more here.

Technical Integration of AAL Solutions in Care Homes and Assisted Living Facilities

This workshop, which will be entirely conducted in German,  aims to equip participants with the expertise needed to effectively strategise, implement, and oversee AAL solutions, while navigating the array of challenges – structural, technical, organisational, legal, or ethical – confronting them, from both resident and care staff perspectives. Additionally, the session aims to explore diverse avenues for supporting care staff and residents in adopting technological innovations. Emphasising a practical approach, the workshop, organised by the University of Innsbruck, aims to surmount barriers hindering the uptake of AAL solutions among care staff and residents.

Primarily tailored for IT staff and facility managers of care/residential homes and assisted living facilities, this workshop aims to fill a gap in addressing the specific needs of this cohort, which has been overlooked in previous events.

With a focus on the practical implementation of AAL solutions and the exchange of experiences in participants’ native language, the workshop seeks to engage stakeholders from Central European regions, including Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and South Tyrol. Held immediately after the AAL practice forum “Smarter Lives,” the workshop leverages synergies with related events to foster a comprehensive dialogue among solution providers, researchers, practitioners, and users.

• The workshop takes place on May 7^th at the Eurac Research, Viale Druso 1, 39100 Bolzano, Italy and will be entirely conducted in German. More details to follow

Prevention and Early Detection of Mental Decline (PEDMeD)

This workshop is organised by Multilogic Ltd. (Budapest, Hungary), in collaboration with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics of Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME).

Drawing on insights garnered from previous projects, this workshop aims to facilitate a dialogue on the potential and challenges of digital solutions in preserving and assessing cognitive skills, prevention and screening of mental decline, diagnosis, and therapy. Targeting a diverse array of participants, including psychologists, psychiatrists, general practitioners, clinicians, older adults, caregivers, local government officials, and IT developers, the workshop seeks to bridge the gap between innovators and end-users, fostering a deeper understanding of user needs and preferences.

Recognising the limited adoption of digital tools for cognitive preservation, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, the workshop is looking to attract speakers and participants from these regions, alongside representatives from wider European contexts, either in person or via online platforms.

• This workshop is expected to take place in October or November this year in Budapest for those attending in person and online for those attending remotely. More details to follow

Solving the Care Crisis with Humanoid Robotic Avatars

Organised by Devanthro, this workshop focuses on remote caregiving.

Amidst the documented care crisis across Europe, characterised by a burgeoning elderly population and juxtaposed with a scarcity of caregivers, Devanthro proposes a solution through the development of technology facilitating remote caregiving via humanoid robotic avatars – “Robodies”.

By enabling caregivers to provide physical assistance remotely, supplemented by AI-powered monitoring features, this workshop aims to explore the feasibility and potential challenges associated with integrating robotic solutions into home care settings, fostering an open discourse around the merits and obstacles of this innovative approach.

Hosted in Germany but conducted in English, the workshop welcomes participants from across Europe, with a particular focus on regions such as DACH, UK, Benelux, France, and the Nordics, to engage in discussions surrounding the transformative potential of robotic avatars in ambulant care.

• This event is expected to take place in May as an online webinar. If successful, it will be repeated later in the year. More details to follow