AAL Renewed!
After an elaborated political process, the long awaited news arrived last week. The AAL Programme will receive €175 million from the European Commission under the new Horizon 2020 research framework programme. With an estimated contribution of €350 million from industrial partners and at least € 175 million from Member States that makes € 700 million for 7 years.
The new programme will be named “Active Assisted Living Programme.”
What are the main goals of the initiative?
- To give older adults access to more and better products and services for ageing well;
- To create a larger market for industry and especially SMEs at European level and improve EU competitiveness in ICT based products and services for ageing well;
- To make researchers benefit from collaboration with other experts at European scale;
- To help governments gain cost efficiencies and increased sustainability of health and social care, while tackling the societal challenge of demographic ageing.
What is new about AAL 2?
- The name of the programme has slightly changed (‘Ambient’ became ‘Active’) to fit with the wider scope of the initiative;
- The AAL 2 will be further optimised for rapid decision-making and new types of support (like prizes and innovation grants) to ensure fast responses to new developments and even further lower entrance barriers, e.g. for web entrepreneurs and developers of mobile app;.
- The new AAL Programme will support the implementation of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing @EIP_AHA by aligning to its scope regarding ICT based innovation: from independent living and integrated care (including telehealth and telecare) to fall prevention, medication adherence and age-friendly environments and communities.
(Source: Digital Agenda)
The decision of the EU Parliament and of the Council