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Project Details


Keywords: [Alarms and Alerters] [Falls] [Supporting Older People]
Name: CAALYX - Complete Ambient Assisted Living eXperiment
Start Date: 1st Jan 07
End Date: 15th Feb 09
Total Project Fund: 1,850,000Euros
Background: Older people and those with chronic health problems often want to remain in their own homes, rather than move into residential care. However, keeping safe and monitoring potential changes in health can be difficult and may involve the person either visiting hospitals and clinics frequently or receiving regular visits from caregivers. Both these options can be expensive and time consuming, so alternative approaches are required.
Description: Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) is a concept which aims to prolong the time people can live independently, through the use of intelligent, highly personalised networked embedded objects and systems. The network constantly monitors output information from the person and highlights any changes which could be indicative of problems developing. This is all done while preserving the individual's privacy, by only contacting remote servers in case of need.
Objective: The main objective of this project is to develop, and test through real user participation, a light mobile device able to measure specific vital signs in older or ill people. This device will detect falls and accidents and will be able to communicate autonomously in real time with the person's caregiver or with the emergency services. The emergency information will include the geographic position and health information about the person concerned. The project will use large non-intrusive new sensors for fall detection and these, coupled with highly sensitive positioning, will address many concerns about adopting this kind of technology.
Progress: Pprototype testing took place in Italy and a follow on project, eCAALYX, began in June 2009.
General Info: Project partners: Telefonica Investigacion y Desarrollo (Spain); Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores (Portugal); Corscience (Germany); COOSS Marche Onus (Italy); Hospital Sant Antoni Abat (Spain).
Web Page: view website

Organisations Involved In This Project


Participants:

Organisation Name Type Tel Town Contact
Faculty of Health and Social Work - University of Plymouth
 Academic
Plymouth
 Dr Maged Kamel Boulos
Dept of Electronics and Computer Engineering - University of Limerick
 Academic
 +353 61 202700
Dr John Nelson

Funding for this project includes a contribution from:

Organisation Name Type Tel Town
European Commission - FP6
 Grant Making Body