Fantastic collaboration between AAL and EIP on AHA at the Forum 2019
As part of their joint mission to support the digital transformation of ageing and care, the AAL Programme has teamed up with the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (EIP on AHA) to bring their 2019 Conference of Partners to the AAL Forum.
EIP on AHA is an initiative to foster innovation and digital transformation in the field of active and healthy ageing. The EC funds several EIPs, all set up to help strengthen EU research and innovation.
The premise of a partnership is to bring together relevant actors at EU, national and regional levels across different policy areas to focus on a specific societal challenge at all levels of the innovation chain. The EIP on AHA was the first EIP and was set up in 2011 to focus on the challenge of our ageing population with an overarching target of increasing by two years by 2020 the average time older people in the EU remain healthy.
The Forum, AAL’s annual showcase event, will be hosted by the city of Aarhus in Denmark and it promises to be the biggest Forum yet.
The action-packed programme offers 32 parallel interactive workshops, two plenaries, exciting keynote speakers and an exhibition floor of up to 90 stands showcasing the latest technology for active and healthy ageing. More than 800 delegates are expected to attend, establishing the two-day event as the year’s most important networking opportunity for all those involved in this growing market sector.
The strategic collaboration between AAL and EIP on AHA at the Forum will kick off with a joint opening session and continue with three joint workshop sessions focusing on a variety of common topics. These will range from advancing the EIP on AHA’s Blueprint for digital transformation of health and care, the commercialisation and implementation of digital health technologies and how to best measure the success of digitally-enabled services.
Perhaps most importantly, however, the two communities are coming together as the European Commission is in discussion about a future partnership programme that addresses the challenges and seizes the opportunities of Europe’s ageing population. This gives everyone attending the Forum the chance to take part in a special joint plenary debate on the future of health and social care for an ageing population in Horizon Europe and have a real say in the future direction of funding for it post-2020.
The collaboration will culminate in the joint closing of the AAL Forum and the 2019 Conference of Partners together with the European Awards for Reference Sites and the presentation of the AAL’s Exhibition Stand Award and Citizen Accelerator prizes as well as the announcement of where the Forum will be held in 2020.
“This year’s AAL Forum promises to be a great showcase for the diversity, dynamism and collaborative spirit of the growing community of ageing well activists, business developers, researchers, regional actors, older people themselves and end users,” says Klaus Niederlander, Director of Central Management Unit of the AAL Association.
“We are very pleased and excited about the collaboration with EIP AHA for this event,” he stresses. It is the perfect chance for the actors of the two programmes to meet and work together and living proof of the growing collaboration between the different European partnership programmes on ageing, which also includes the JPI MYBL. We speak with one voice.
Jose Martinez, coordinator of the CSA supporting the commission in managing the EIP on AHA is also excited about this collaboration and sees it as a perfect chance for people working in the same sector to get together and share ideas.“This is a great opportunity to network, plan and join a wide-ranging audience of leading European thinkers, regulators, policymakers, regional actors and associations” he says.
“Participants from both communities will have the occasion to meet up with their peers in a real-life setting. Let’s use the occasion to develop synergies between these two exciting European programmes,” he continues.
We are looking forward to seeing you all at the AAL FORUM 2019!