Rather at the beginning of our project we visited the predecessing AAL test regions in Burgenland and Salzburg respectively Tirol. We wanted to learn from them and exchange experiences.

On 5 July 2017 WAALTeR, one of the more recent regions, visited us. We could give a lot of practical information and lessons to our guests from Vienna and Lower Austria. Afterwards we could show the demo appartement at Geriatrische Gesundheitszentren der Stadt Graz. Topics in our discussion were:

• Requirements and users,
• technical components and systems,
• trial planning and tools,
• recruting and experiences with participants so far,
• installation and rollout and
• the demo appartement.

The participants from both projects were involved in very intense discussions. Due to that we “prolongued” our session from three to nearly four hours…

A big part of the RegionAAL team (13 people) took off on 19 January 2016 to visit and learn from two other Austrian AAL test regions: the ZentrAAL in Salzburg and West-AAL in Innsbruck.

Following the team’s arrival at Salzburg and a short refreshment

break, the group was warmly welcomed by Cornelia Schneider and Victoria Willner (both from Salzburg Research) and we discussed some topics that are particularly interesting for us, including:

• Requirements and users
• Selection of technical components
• Study planning

On the same day, the RegionAAL team continued its journey to Innsbruck, where they had a chance to visit the beautiful old town and finish the day with a nice dinner. Not only did it provide the opportunity to reflect on the visit to ZentrAAL, but also for the development of further ideas for the project.
RegionAAL at West-AAL

The visit to West-AAL took place on 20 January 2016. The team was greeted by Felix Piazzolo and Luka Cotelj (both from the University of Innsbruck) in the senior residence Veldidenapark. The test region West-AAL operates one year longer than ZentrAAL; hence, beside the above mentioned issues, advice could be sought on other topics due to the experience of the team at West-AAL:

• Rolling out technologies that are planned to be installed
• Equipment and construction of a model apartment

These visits were certainly a very valuable experience for team RegionAAL, and they could take on a lot of experience for their own project. Presumably, the next AAL test region will also request an appointment to visit us in a year’s time … ?

Part of the RegionAAL project team gathered on 10 December 2015 for a visit to the AAL-Test Region modulAAR in the Care Competence Center of the Austrian Workers’ Samaritan Federation in Lackenbach.

The aim of the visit was to learn about the various aspects of these types of test regions in more detail. Since modulAAR was the first test region in Austria, a lot of experience could be shared about the initial set-up of requirements, technical implementation of different solutions and recruitment of suitable test households, and scientifically observed studies, including the subsequent evaluation and reporting.

Following the interesting results of this visit, we look forward to next year’s visit to the two other Austrian AAL test regions.

NORTEXCEL2020 is a common project between the Portugese region of Norte and JOANNEUM RESEARCH, and currently focuses on developing ideas on how the industrial structures of the regions could be improved during the next few years.

The partners from Portugal spent a few days (30 November – 3 December) in Graz to identify a number of projects and activities in the areas of health and AAL which can lead to future collaborations between Styrian and Portuguese partners.

RegionAAL is seen as an exemplary project within the area of “pilot regions for the use of AAL technologies and to show the effectiveness of such solutions” which can be further developed as a common initiative in the future.

On October 19th 2015 the partners met for the official start of the project in Graz. In this work meeting administrative issues were discussed as well as the goals and expectations of each of the partners.
The meeting was also used to get to know all members of the project team and to clarify questions regarding documentation and project management issues.