AAL-WELL Ambient Assistive Living Technologies for Wellness, Engagement and Long Life

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As people across the world live longer, there is a growing need to support active ageing so that the extra years of life can be lived as well as possible. The potential of technology to assist people in all aspects of their lives is increasingly being recognised. Ambient Assistive Living (AAL) technologies refer to items that people can use in their everyday lives to make life easier and help them manage their daily activities. To enable the maximum number of people to benefit from current and future AAL technologies requires not only a good understanding of the needs of older adults but also a comprehensive analysis of how they view technology, their attitudes towards using it and how they make decisions about purchasing and using technology. Social and cultural factors can influence these issues and so this project aims to work with older adults across three different countries to explore their needs, attitudes and behaviour towards novel technologies.The project team brings together experts in gerontology, engineering, occupational therapy and psychology from the UK, Canada and Sweden to work with older adults to address their current and future needs for technology to support them to live their lives as well as possible. The project comprises several complementary elements that will be carried out in parallel within the three countries. The first element is a user needs analysis to examine the older adults' requirements in relation to AAL technologies, including those people who need support with cognitive activities, physical activities or motor activities. The findings from this stage will determine the development of novel AAL technologies in the next stage to address various aspects of daily life, such as shopping or cooking, supporting people with activities they need to remember, such as taking medication and keeping in touch with people. These novel technologies will be piloted with older adults in each of the three countries to examine how they respond to and explore them to inform future developments. Additionally, we will look at how to support people to learn to use new technologies and incorporate them into their lives to help them live as well as possible.