PlatformUptake.eu

Ageing presents one of the greatest socio-economic challenges of the 21st century. The European Union has devoted a high level of resources to ICT projects in the field of active and healthy ageing (AHA). As such a considerable number of open service platforms for the development of innovative solutions in the AHA domain have been created. Unfortunately, their impact in the field as well as existing gaps and uptake potential have not been thoroughly analysed and assessed. 

Against this background PlatformUptake.eu seeks to understand the whole ecosystem of open service platforms in the AHA (Active and Healthy Ageing) and IoT (Internet of Things) domain to contribute to the development of an open market for digital solutions in the field and ultimately promote the uptake of open service platforms. The H2020-project PlatformUptake.eu has been funded by the European Commission through the framework program Horizon 2020 (H2020) in the course of the call “Support for the large-scale uptake of open service platforms in the Active and Healthy Ageing domain”.

The project has a consortium consisting of a total of 12 partners from 10 different European Countries, including SYNYO (project coordinator), Austria; Institute of science and information technologies, Italy; Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research IGD, Germany; Technical university of Madrid, Spain; Institute of Communication and Computer Systems, Greece; Jožef Stefan Institute, Slovenia; Afedemy, Netherlands; Caritas, Portugal; Linköping University, Sweden; University of the Balearic Islands, Spain; Smart Homes, Netherlands and Etablissementsa Lievens Lanckman, Belgium. 

SYNYO will be responsible for the Project management and coordination. This includes tasks like the management of data privacy and ethical issues but also project finalization. In addition, SYNYO is in charge of the implementation of the online hub available via www.PlatformUptake.eu including the design of the front end with appealing visualisation targeting all project stakeholders.

Throughout the duration of 26 months the project partners will seek to deliver an inventory of the state of the art and evaluate the use of open service platforms in the active and healthy ageing domain, including both open platforms – such as UniversAAL, FIWARE, and partly-open/proprietary platforms developed by industry, and address the interactions between these platforms.

To grasp and the impact of such platforms and enhance their uptake, the project will prepare a methodology for monitoring open platform development, adoption and spread across Europe. It will achieve this by listing key factors that determine success or hindrance in their uptake by the end-user groups, and also the evolution of their ecosystems and stakeholder networks.

Departing from the collected and evaluated insights the project consortium will establish KPIs presenting the basis for the design and creation of smart assessment and visualisation tools. These will enable all relevant stakeholder groups in the field to assess the success, uptake and capability gaps of a specific platform. Critical part of the intended project platform will constitute a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) that will demonstrate open service platforms to their end users depicting their functionalities and benefits.

With this comprehensive approach PlatformUptake.eu will support the large-scale uptake of platforms, facilitate knowledge exchange and a common understanding among all stakeholders in the Active and Healthy Ageing market.

Links

www.platformuptake.eu

Keywords

Open service platforms, Active and Healthy Ageing Market, success and hindrance factors, evaluation and visualisation tools,