Our project RegionAAL was presented at the Nursing Symposium 2018 of the Austrian Nurse Directors Association (ANDA). The symposium took place from 6 to 8 June 2018 in beautiful St. Veit im Pongau. The ANDA working group deals with current questions and developments in nursing management and supports the establishment of a communication network between nursing experts in Europe.

The latest scientific and practical findings on the main topic “Nursing Management 4.0: Big Data – Robotic – Digitization: Fiction and Reality!” were presented by internationally renowned speakers and deepened in workshops with the participants. The health, safety and communication assistance technologies deployed in RegionAAL were presented and demonstrated in workshop 2 on “Technological support for intra- and extra-mural care”, which was held four times due to keen interest.

The Geriatric Health Centres of the City of Graz opened the first training centre for family carers in Styria (“Albert Schweitzer Trainingszentrum”). The mayor of Graz – Siegfried Nagl – was also present at the opening ceremony.

The guests at the event on 1 March 2018 showed great interest both in future courses on nursing activities by relatives and in the possibilities of the supporting technologies in our model apartment, which is also located in the training centre.

Kerstin Löffler and Kurt Majcen submitted a paper about our project RegionAAL for the category “Ambient Assisted Living and Digital Healthcare” within 10th Forum Media Technology at FH-St. Pölten.

The paper was presented on 30 November 2017. It was well received by many people as self-determined ageing in dignity is becoming more and more important to many people in our society.

This year’s AAL Forum took place in Coimbra (Portugal) from 2 to 4 October. A series of interactive workshops were offered in the forum programme. The Austrian AAL regions organized one of the Workshops (“Pilot studies as enabler for the market introduction of AAL Solutions”) which dealt with a number of aspects that are important when preparing and performing a pilot region with a field trial.

Three regions were participating in the workshop. The Styrian region RegionAAL presented “Which (AAL) technologies to choose / to use?”, Smart VitAALity from Carinthia told about “Boundaries for planning pilot studies” and West-AAL from Tyrol and Vorarlberg showed “Study results as basis for follow-up activities”. In addition the study EvAALuation provided “Indicators for evaluating the impact of AAL solutions”. The second part of the workshop was dedicated to an interesting fishbowl discussion. Specific questions raised in the presentations were discussed with the audience to get a picture into which directions AAL test regions may head in the future.

The six Austrian AAL test regions organized a workshop at the eHealth Summit Austria 2017. The workshop with title „Assistive solutions put into practice – Experiences from the Austrian AAL pilot regions“ had two sessions (as extracted from the programme):

• Presentation of the region projects with their lessons learnt
  WAALTeR: Planning phase – Challenges related to preparing the project proposal
  Smart VitAALity: Planning phase – Boundaries for planning pilot studies
  RegionAAL: Requirements specification and system design – involvement of users
  ZentrAAL: Pilot study – Preparation, organization and implementation
  moduLAAr: Pilot study – Technological and organizational challenges in the field
  West-AAL: Pilot study – Study results as basis for follow-up activities

• open discussion in a fishbowl like style
  Which criteria play a crucial role for successfully implementing and deploying AAL and similar solutions? (from legal and ethical viewpoint, from a user perspective, from a technical viewpoint, from an organizational and financial viewpoint)
  Can experiences and best practices be transferred? (to other national and international pilot regions, to similar pilot projects in the health sector)

Maria Fellner (JOANNEUM RESEARCH / DIGITAL) represented RegionAAL.

“Premiere für die Gesundheitsmesse KroneFit: Gemeinsam mit dem Land Steiermark, dem Steirischen Hochschulraum, der Medizinischen Universität Graz und zahlreichen Partnern des Gesundheitswesens veranstaltet die Kronenzeitung Steiermark erstmals die Gesundheitsmesse KroneFit am 5. und 6. Mai 2017 in der Halle A auf der Grazer Messe.
[…]
Besonders spannend ist das Projekt „Active & Assisted Living” (AAL) der Forschungsgesellschaft JOANNEUM RESEARCH. Mit Hilfe intelligenter Technologien und Lösungen hilft AAL dabei, die Hindernisse und Mängel, die für ältere Menschen das Wohnen daheim schwierig machen zu überwinden und den Alltag zu Hause einfacher und sicherer zu gestalten. Dazu wurde mit „RegionAAL” eine in der Steiermark einzigartige Testregion für diese Technologien geschaffen, für die insgesamt 240 Haushalte in Graz, Deutschlandsberg und Leibnitz gesucht werden, die an diesem Versuch kostenlos teilnehmen möchten.”
(Homepage der Messe Graz, no English text available)

The project RegionAAL as well as the project partners were represented with stands and lectures and brought the ideas and projects closer to the interested audience. Perhaps it was even possible to win new participants for the large field trial.

Would you like to join our study and test the RegionAAL system? Participation in the trial is completely free! If you are interested, please contact

• Kerstin Löffler: 0316 7060-1061, kerstin.loeffler@stadt.graz.at
  for the Graz area
• Josef Steiner: 0664 24 48 728, office@sozialverein-deutschlandsberg.at
  for the Deutschlandsberg and Leibnitz areas