The average human lifespan increase has significant impacts on healthcare organizations and on every aspect of citizens’ wellbeing. One of the main areas of intervention focuses on elderly people affected by Cognitive Impairment (CI). These people, especially when living alone, are significantly exposed to undeniable risks that can affect their health (falling, malnutrition, hygiene issues, etc.). Limitations regarding CI can also translate into social and physical limitations during daily activities (cooking, showering, ect.). The DECI project aims to improve a healthy lifestyle for elderly people effected by CI, passing through a system monitoring vital signs, treating and managing diseases and, in general, supporting the adoption of a healthy and independent lifestyle. To achieve this, the project will revolve around the definition of a business model to supply assistance services (in-house for the elderly and with a remote-based approach supporting autonomy), allowing independent living for elderly people affected by CI, granting high levels of quality of life. The proposed business model will include an up-to-date organizational model, both modular, flexible and scalable, meant for regulators and service suppliers, and the support of an IT platform based on innovative and easy-to-replicate technologies. In order to validate the business model inside real-life environments, four pilot projects will be kicked-off, by involving patients in four different countries: Israel, Italy, Spain and Sweden. Every pilot project will pass through the implementation of the organizational model and the IT solution defined as part of the DECI initiative, therefore allowing tuning of the model and of all implemented devices. Business plan and economic models (in private/ public sectors and in different countries) will be adopted in order to address cost coverage issues related to the implementation of new procedures and technological solutions inside real healthcare environments.

ENRICHME tackles the progressive decline of cognitive capacity in the ageing population proposing an integrated platform for Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) with a mobile service robot for long-term human monitoring and interaction, which helps the elderly to remain independent and active for longer. The system will contribute and build on recent advances in mobile service robotics and AAL, exploiting new non-invasive techniques for physiological and activity monitoring, as well as adaptive Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), to provide services in support to mental fitness and social inclusion. The system will enable caregivers and medical staff to identify evolving trends of cognitive impairments and to detect immediate emergencies. ENRICHME will use new qualitative models for rich yet compact representations of daily life activities. It will also identify humans in order to provide personalized services for elderly living with other persons. Novel context-aware HRI will provide tools for cognitive stimulation and social inclusion, which improve over time by learning from and adapting to the state of the user. A professional infrastructure of networked care will widen the social sphere of intervention in support of elderly and caregivers. ENRICHME includes multi-disciplinary research in geriatrics, gerontology and gero-technology, enabling further studies in social sciences and neuropsychology. Thanks to a modular implementation, which limits costs and allows for maximal flexibility, the system will be tested in 2 separate AAL labs and validated for 1 year in 3 different elderly housing facilities across Europe. Significant impact is expected by prolonging the independent living at home of elderly who need constant monitoring. Their quality of life will be improved by dedicated services for cognitive stimulation and social inclusion. Relevant stakeholders in the project will ensure further impact and economic exploitation of the proposed technologies for healthy ageing.

Disruptive Technologies (DTs) have a great yet untapped potential to boost the developing of new and more efficient Public Services. Reasons entail resource shortage in terms of competences and infrastructures, but also resistance to and lack of trust in technology. Although a recent uptake of the topic of ethical, social and legal issues related to DTs, practical guidelines to fully assess the risks of adopting DTs in Public Administrations are still missing. The ETAPAS project aims at introducing a practical framework, supported by a prototypical software platform, to offer a first-time assessment methodology capable of measuring and mitigating ethical, societal and legal risks. The project will co-design with Public Bodies a framework consisting of ethical principles, a set of measurable indicators and a legal construct for the responsible adoption of DTs. The framework will be tested and validated on four use cases in which DTs are applied to face the challenges of the Italian Ministry of Finance, Don Gnocchi Foundation, and local municipalities in Norway and Greece. Use cases’ development, as well as exploitation and dissemination activities, will be strengthened by the engagement of two Digital Innovation Hubs and their network. This will ensure ETAPAS framework wide applicability to the European Public Sector and will prove in practice how DTs can support the realisation of responsible innovative solutions of Public Services. Lessons learnt and PAs’ feedback will feed into ETAPAS final output: a governance model to allow other public organisations to replicate the methodology and adopt innovative solutions while assessing, monitoring and mitigating associated risks. ETAPAS project aims at accelerating a responsible adoption of disruptive technologies in the delivery of Public Service so that Public Administrations can reduce management costs, improve service efficiency, securely manage data assets, and foster greater citizen trust and engagement.