With more the 200 participants, the final conference of Pharaon presented the work of the EU-funded project to make smart and active living for Europe’s ageing population a reality by integrating a diversity of technologies in multiple EU countries.
Co-organised by AGE Platform Europe, the conference of Pharaon – A Digital Future for Healthy Ageing was successfully held on 26 June in Florence, Italy and online in conjunction with the 13° Forum Italian Ambient Assisted Living. About 100 participants – health and social care professionals, industry representatives, policy makers, researchers and representatives of older people – joined the event in-person and over 100 views were registered online.
The event provided the opportunity to
- learn more about the Pharaon pilot results and lessons learnt, the impact of the project, experiences from other large-scale pilots,
- liaise with the different stakeholders
- start discussion and exploitation of the project’s services.
The exhibition space allowed participants to test solutions implemented in the context of Pharaon.
“Care is a community responsibility.”
Technology to sustain quality of life
Pharaon has created a set of integrated and highly customizable technology solutions including advanced services, devices, and tools to foster healthy, active and independent living in an ageing Europe. These advanced technologies were tested by almost 3000 people in 6 pilot sites across five countries and more than 3600 people were involved in different stages, like co-design, pre-validation and deployment.
The global Pharaon results and success stories from the pilot sites were presented in the first session “Innovation in Action: Pharaon pilot results”. Among the conclusions:
- Use of technology positively improved quality of life and loneliness in the experimental group.
- Pharaon solutions usability, negative correlated with users’ perceived Loneliness, decreases with age and improves with time.
- The Quality of life of caregivers positively correlated with higher education and technology experience.
The presentations in this session were complemented by short videos giving participants of the Pharaon pilots a voice as to how Pharaon has impacted their lives.
The impact of Pharaon was also the focus of the session on “Transforming care and lives: Pharaon’s journey towards sustainable impact and market solutions”. Pharaon’s impact assessment and cost-effectiveness results were shared, followed by Pharaon’s market place CATAALOG and the impact Pharaon had in the area of standardisation.
Recommendations & success factors
AGE Project Manager, Ilenia Gheno, moderated the last morning session on “Innovation in Europe: achievements from large scale pilots”. The session discussed lessons learnt and recommendations for future research projects and policy makers from the EU-funded projects Pharaon, Gatekeeper, SHAPES, ACTIVAGE and VALUECARE.
In her closing statement, Eleonora Vanni, President of LegaCoopSociali, highlighted some critical success factors for technology in active and healthy ageing, including:
- Person-centredness: from the design of the technology and the service to guarantee acceptance
- Relevance of data and its use: issue of interoperability
- Enabling digital skills: concerns operators, institutions, users
- Consider potential invasiveness
- Transfer of processes to public administration: importance of cost-benefit analysis and sustainability
- Integrated model is needed: economy that does not leave anyone behind.
This topic was further elaborated in the afternoon roundtable with policy makers looking at “Exploring the future of active and healthy ageing policy” and ensuring the sustainability of the project.
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