A TV-based ICT Platform for Active Ageing, Tele-care and Social Networking

The modern society is dealing with a progressive increase of the elderly population. The development of services for social inclusion and independent living is of paramount importance to enable the elderly to live in their homes autonomously as long as possible. Such a solution paves the way to a sustainable social and economic model where older adults develop self-confidence and promote their participation to the community life. This paper presents the hardware/software framework of a novel ICT system for active ageing support, which combines the potentialities of broadband internet services to the simplicity of TV use. User research in three European countries allowed to define several important services (healthcare, home monitoring, shopping, communication and social inclusion) to be provided through the developed platform. Its modularity, supported by the App paradigm, enables easy customization and future developments.