SILVER ECONOMY

PRODINTEC carried out a seminar for end users through The Programme for Mature Students of the University of Oviedo (PUMUO) which opens up a sphere for encounters and participation aimed at the members of the population older than 50 who have free time and are eager to broaden their knowledge.

Seminar was carried out in March (21^st ) in Oviedo and during the seminar PRODINTEC shown the project results, clarifying misunderstandings about the projects topics and collecting different inputs from the elderly in order to complement final project documents.

PRODINTEC will show current

results related to Silver Economy in: 2013 International Technology Robotics Applications Workshop-INTERA 2013. http://www.ieeespain.com/dmdocuments/INTERA-CallforpapersINTERA2013.pdf.

Main activities for PRODINTEC are focused on electrical mobility and assistance robotics, some of the topics covered by Silver Economy.

SILVER ECONOMY is a project focused on developing, promoting and disseminating strategies to face new challenges related to population ageing, especially regarding technology services for wellbeing and health monitoring such as robotic assistant, electrical mobility or health sports, including health tourism and green care.

Started in July, 2001, the project is focused on approaching the new technology advances to the ageing community, strengthening the interregional collaboration by developing a community network and identifying key business opportunities in these fields that covers the elderly needs.

In this sense, Silver Economy is a heterogeneous project where each partner mainly attacks one of the topic mentioned above. Thus, PRODINTEC

(project leader in Asturias) is focused to achieve information about electrical mobility and robotic assistant thanks to their jobs and experience developing projects in this area. Bay-Logi (North Hungary) has been working on Intelligent Systems and Sensors, intelligent homes, Ambient Assisted Living solutions, telemedicine, tele-care solutions or intelligent clothes, jobs known by the entity due to their daily activities. On the other hand, health sport, including health tourism and green care were analysed by the Finnish Participant thanks to know that these topics can vitalize life and extend people’s life, finding them new business opportunities related to well-being tourism and green care concepts

Thanks to that, the consortium has been covering different issues during the project life, obtaining technical reports (one per topic), a project network, a SWOT analysis, the identification of good practices or a survey analysis based on a selected questionnaire in order to know needs and opinions from elderly.

This survey was planned as an information tool in order to identify current situation/needs of the elderly people, and potential market niche for entities established in the regions of the Consortium. The survey covers different issues, thereby increasing both the difficulty of analysis, such as obtaining general conclusions. Nevertheless, initial conclusions related to possibilities and marked needs are shown below:

• Electrical mobility and assistive robotic.

It will be an interesting sector. Now, there are not enough information related to electrical posibilities and some of the people thought that current products are too expensive. So, companies with these kind of products could carry out advertising activities in order to achieve both, market positioning (with products explanation and the reason of these prices), such the end users knowledge.

Particulary important are all products and information related to assistance. Thus, the answers shown an independent daily living but, sometimes, this feeling is far from reality or it will change during their life. For this reason, the assistive robotic could play a key role in their daily aid. However, to achieve this goal it’s neccesary to increase the knowledge of the end-users in this issue and carrying out developing new products easy handling.

• Health.

Based to the answers of the survey elderly people are interested in their health and they want maintain and improve it. They estimated their health is good but they would like to improve it with two main activities: health tourism and free medical checks. In this sense, many different companies are able to offer both options and would have potential market in the regions of the consortium.

According the survey most of the elderly people do exercise less or more. Excersising in this point can also be functional exercise (like household work), but still structured and guided sport activities are considered to be an important issue by elderly people. For this reason a mixed service package where health tourism will be completed with guided sport activities and medical checks would be an interesting service model and alternative for companies.

• ITC.

The internet use as key component for ITC solutions is widespread in the regiones. Nevertheless, North-Hungary is an interesting exception where 60% of elder don’t use it at all. Training programs in this field could be a new market opportunity for entities.

Final document will be included into the project guide that will be published at the end of the project in June, 2013.

Häme Development Centre Ltd. is an active partner for the region’s entrepreneurs

Häme Development Centre Ltd. provides the Hämeenlinna sub region with a full range of business services. Our mission is to develop and improve the region’s entrepreneurial and competitive climate.We believe that this is the key to successful entrepreneurship, which in turn creates new jobs for our inhabitants. The hub of our activities is the Business Service Centre in Hämeenlinna. Business advisors maintain close contacts with entrepreneurs and enterprises in all of the regional municipalities (city of Hämeenlinna and its surrounding municipalities Hattula and Janakkala ).

Häme Development Centre Ltd. is one of the Silver Economy project partners and participates to identify potential solutions for elderly needs related to health sports, tourism and green care.

For further information related to the project and/or Häme Development Centreparticipation, please contact with Project manager Annemari Syrjänen: annemari.syrjanen@kehittamiskeskus.fi

Webpage: www.kehittamiskeskus.fi

AMU is one of the leading academic centres in Poland. The University currently employs nearly 2,800 teaching staff, including 318 tenured professors, 454 AMU professors, 1,514 doctors and senior lecturers and 47,000 students a year (including 1800 students from abroad). Our professors coordinate or are partners in 18 research projects funded by the European Union Framework Programmes 6 and 7. AMU researchers are currently implementing 451 projects funded by the Polish Ministry of Science.

Sociology Department of AMU conducts a lot of research in this subject, also in cooperation with various external institutions (especially providing social assistance). Opened in 2011 as independent sub-unit Social Care Department is very much focused on providing social help to all types of underprivileged groups, which includes elderly. Sociology Department of AMU has substantial input in knowledge development and policy making when it comes to issues related with

elderly’ well-being. In this sense, they participation into SILVER ECONOMY project is very important in order to know elderly situation, needs and felling related to technology, sports and health care.

Hanna Mamzer and Marcelina Sadowska are employees at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and they are Silver Economy manager in AMU.

For any question related to the project in the sociological area, please you can put in contact with:

Hanna Mamzer: hanna@mamzer.pl; Mamzer@amu.edu.pl

Marcelina Sadowska: marcelina.sadowska@wp.pl;