Personalised coaching for well-being and care of people as they age

The activity aims at developing and validating radically new ICT based concepts and approaches for empowering and motivating people in need of guidance and care due to age related conditions, in cooperation with their carers where relevant, and to help them improve and maintain their independence, functional capacity, health status as well as preserving their physical, cognitive, mental and social well-being.

Scope

Proposals should develop a proof of concept of radically new solutions for a personalised "virtual coach", building upon intelligent ICT environments, access to relevant physiological and behavioural data, new forms of accessible interaction based on tangible user interaction concepts, open platforms[1] and emotional computing. Usability and ease of user interaction should be essential design elements of the "coach".

The "coach" should provide personalised advice, guidance and follow-up for key age related issues in daily life which impact the person's ability to remain active and independent, for example diet, physical activity, risk avoidance, preventive measures, lifestyle and activity management, leisure, social participation and overall wellness. The goal should be to preserve physical, cognitive, mental and social well-being for as long as possible and to facilitate interaction with carers (where relevant).

Solutions should build on and apply multi-disciplinary research and include intelligent algorithms beyond state-of-the-art capable of reasoning, autonomous learning and adaptation to personal needs, emotional and behavioural patterns, conditions and preferences as well as the users' living environment and their social connections. Solutions should be integrated seamlessly in existing every-day activities and provide desired information in fast and efficient manner. Attention theft by ICT (consuming too much of the user's time) should be avoided.

Proposals should address relevant ethics and gender aspects and should also assess related legal and regulatory questions such as ownership of data, data protection/privacy, liability and consumer protection. It is crucial that users are involved and drive the innovation at all stages of design and development, including user acceptability, satisfaction and impact in realistic settings.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 3 and 4 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact

The proposal should present methodologies and metrics as appropriate for measuring its progress towards the expected impact in:

• Usefulness and effectiveness of personalized recommendations and follow-up in terms of the goals of preserving physical, cognitive, mental and social well-being for as long as possible;
• Validation of non-obtrusive technology for physical, cognitive, social and mental well-being;
• Evidence of user-centred design and innovation, new intuitive ways of human-computer interaction, and user acceptance;
• Potential cost-effectiveness due to enhanced self-care, life-style and care management.

[1]Proposers are encouraged to work with open platforms like FIWARE and UniversAAL where relevant.