Promoting Standards and Interoperability in the Field of AAL
These documents are the results of the “Support Action Aimed at Promoting Standards and Interoperability in the Field of AAL”, which has been running from July 2013 to spring 2014.
The goals of this support action were two-fold:
- To make existing standards more easily accessible by identifying use-cases covering the topics of all six calls of the AAL JP published to date and by mapping technical standards to these use-cases such that the result provides guidance on the use of standards for the AAL community;
- To raise the awareness of existing standards in the field of AAL by organising two workshops and inviting partners of the AAL JP projects and the wider AAL community.
AAL Use cases and integration profiles
AAL Use cases (selected collection)
Background
Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) can be described as concepts, products and services that combine
new technologies and social environment to improve the quality of life for people in all phases of
life. AAL uses assistive technology to keep people at work productive and healthy, to keep people
at home healthy, independent and integrated, and to improve the delivery of care where and when
needed. AAL systems consist of a combination of products and components from various industrial
sectors, and their operation requires an “ecosystem” of service providers for planning, installation,
maintenance, operation and service provision. Furthermore, it is of key importance that AAL
systems are “future-proof”, i.e. can be extended and maintained over a longer period of time,
growing and adapting to the changing needs of the user. This can only be achieved with modular
solutions, where components can be combined in a flexible manner. This requires standardized
interfaces between systems and system components, a property called “interoperability”, i.e. the
ability of components to work together in a seamless manner. It can be argued that interoperability
is a key requirement for the success of AAL solutions on the market.