AAL4All Project

OVERVIEW

Active older adults living alone tend to feel unsafe if neither a next-of-kin nor a professional care provider knows when they need help.

The A4A solution aims to enable active older adults to stay independent for longer in their own smart home by introducing non-stigmatizing, affordable and preventive plug-and-play technology that can be seamlessly adapted to changing needs.

The AAL4All project is co-funded by the European Programme AAL (Active Assisted Living) and organisations from 5 countries, Denmark, Austria, Portugal, Romania and Switzerland. Launched in January 2022, the project will last until mid 2024. Starting with a co-creation phase, the A4A solution has been developed and will be tested in the field trial in 2023 and 2024.

PURPOSE

The AAL4All project aims to democratise the healthcare system by enabling and empowering next-of-kin caregivers to implement digital care monitoring solutions for prevention and improved quality of living for their older adults

CONTRIBUTING TO THE AAL OBJECTIVES

Improving the Quality of Life of Older People and Their Networks

  • The A4A project specifically aims to improve Quality of Life for older adults and their informal caregivers with a solution designed for the informal caregivers to play a facilitating role in an early stage of the older adult’s independent living.
  • Specifically for the informal caregivers, the Quality of Life is expected to be significantly improved, as the ‘peace of mind’ of the older adult’s well-being will increase with the A4A solution.
  • The operational professional caregivers are also expected to be positively impacted, as their care support should improve with actionable and individualised data insight about the older adult and the indirect support of the informal caregiver.

Supporting Health & Care Systems

  • The A4A solution takes a different approach to caregiving than classic healthcare systems in Europe, which tend to be dysfunctional and reactive ‘sickcare’ systems rather than preventive, data-driven caregiver services systems like A4A, which can also involve the informal caregiver. 
  • Moreover, most existing solutions tend to be complex and expensive, while A4A offers an affordable basic digital safety infrastructure, which (health) insurers should have a  commercial interest in supporting as their insurance customers are also informal caregivers and older adults.
  • The quality of work of the formal/professional caregivers is therefore expected to be improved by the data insights about the older adult’s well-being with the ability to intervene early if ‘anomalies’ are detected.
  • The informal caregiver’s involvement is expected to ease the workload in some aspects for the formal caregiver, and the work management efficiency for the formal caregiver is expected to be improved.

Supporting Health & Care Systems

  • The A4A strategy is to establish a sort of informal caregiver market that should co-exist with the institutionalised/professional healthcare/eldercare market, providing an affordable, preventive and non-age-stigmatising safety infrastructure for older adults.
  • The anticipated route-to-market is to sell directly to informal caregivers, who would act as ‘facilitators’, decision-makers, installers and caregivers based on the A4A solution.
  • They will in some cases request professional involvement from professional care providers, which should allow the latter to work with the A4A system without having to fund the system.
  • Professional care providers could adopt the A4A solution as a data driven ‘decision-making tool’ to improve the care service, when they deploy it in the homes of the older adult they look after.