Cáritas de Coimbra promoted a discussion in Portuguese about open web platforms in the area of Active Ageing

February 26, 2021
Notícias, Notícias CDC

On the 25th of February 2021, the Workshop “Open Web Platforms that support active and healthy ageing” took place, promoted by Cáritas Diocesana de Coimbra. This event was attended by more than 50 stakeholders, from various positions in the value chain, from all over the country, who discussed mainly how to promote the use and exploitation of these open platforms.

Ageing presents one of the greatest socio-economic challenges of the 21st century, with more than 20% of Europeans over 65 in 2025. To address to demographic changes with the necessary structure and resources, the European Union has made several ICT projects viable, creating a considerable number of “open source” platforms for the development of innovative solutions in the field of active and healthy ageing. However, these various platforms did not have the success and adoption expected.

The “Open Web platforms that support active and healthy ageing” workshop, held within the framework of the PlatformUptake.eu project cycle of workshops, sought to share knowledge and collect the needs and doubts of possible users of open platforms in the area of active and healthy ageing, meet the needs and requests of the various stakeholders, and identify success factors and lessons learned from the sharing of experiences of end users, end consumers and competent authorities for the adoption, leverage and promotion of open platforms. The event was welcomed by Alexander Nikolov, coordinator of the PlatformUptake.eu project and Willeke van Staalduinen, coordinator of the workshop cycle. This was followed by a brief contextualization of the theme “Open platforms in the area of active and healthy ageing” conducted by Flávia Rodrigues of the Innovation Department of Cáritas Coimbra, and also the presentation of the pioneering open platform eVida promoted by João Quintas of the Pedro Nunes Institute. In the last two moments of the workshop, the theme of implementation and use of this type of platforms was introduced as an integral part of a SHAFE ecosystem (Healthy, Smart and Friendly Environments) by Carina Dantas, coordinator of the SHAFE Network and ended with a discussion between the various guests and participants moderated by Diana Guardado of the Department of Innovation of Cáritas Coimbra and manager of the PlatformUptake.eu project.

According to Diana Guardado “The theme of open platforms is very relevant nowadays. The discussion was very productive and rich in wisdom, thanks to the different experiences and views of the various stakeholders that we managed to bring together”.

On March 10 the next workshop of the cycle will take place, in English, dedicated to end users. Cáritas Coimbra will be the speaker of this workshop where will share experiences of end users, what are the benefits of using these platforms and how we can explore them in order to make them facilitators of support services.

The PlatformUptake.eu project, which is a Coordination and Support Action for the European Commission, financed by the Horizon 2020 program of the European Union, aims to analyse and describe the ecosystem of these platforms, promoting synergies between the respective networks and related projects in the AHA – Active domains and Healthy Ageing and IoT – Internet of Things. It is a partnership of 12 entities: Cáritas Coimbra (Portugal), Italian National Research Council (Italy), Fraunhofer (Germany), Technical University of Madrid (Spain), Institute of Communication and Computer Systems (Greece), Jožef Stefan Institute ( Slovenia), AFEdemy (Netherlands), Linköping University (Sweden), University of the Balearic Islands (Spain), Stichting Smart Homes (Netherlands), Etablissements A. Lievens Lanckman (Belgium) and SYNYO GmbH (Austria), which is the Project’s coordinator.