Information on the service

Service

SOCIABLE will integrate and pilot in several European countries (Greece, Italy, Norway, and Spain) an integrated service empowering the elderly to improve their mental ability, while at the same time boosting their social interaction. The service will overall target several individuals with mild dementia, as well as cognitive problems. It will be offered to end-users (aged individuals) at specialized care centres, but also within their home environment.
The SOCIABLE service and associated technology platform will feature the following innovative aspects:
(a) Creation and deployment of a pool of balanced and individualized cognitive training games, according to the target users. Hence, each individual using the service will benefit from personalized cognitive training.
(b) Deployment of novel multi-touch, mixed reality interfaces over surface computing platforms.
(c) Networking capabilities enabling aged users to communicate with care centres (and vice versa), as well as other aged individuals.
(d) Novel operation social interaction and motivation services, bringing together elderly users that share common interests, experiences, wishes, preferences and/or social objectives.
(e) A unique operational model involving the mediation and participation of expert users and health professionals in the care centres in order to create tailored training games, while at the same time providing opportunities for increased social interaction.

Overall , the successful conclusion of the proposed pilots will stimulate the uptake of innovative ICT based services and products in the area of ICT Assisted Cognitive Training and Social Interaction, which can enable a wide range of business opportunities.

Ownership

The service will be technically integrated, supported and maintained by the technology providers of the consortium. It will be provided by the care service providers of the consortium (in each one of the participating countries). The services will be jointly owned by the consortium (during the pilot operation). In the medium and longer term it is envisaged that the service will be owned/offered by specific partners or even a joint venture established by several members of the consortium.

Users

During the pilot phase of the project (short term i.e. within 2-3 years after project start) the project will be piloted with a minimum of 350 users (as analyzed in the section number of users below). Access and inclusion of the users to the SOCIABLE pilot, will be ensured via the municipalities, hospitals and other care service providers of the SOCIABLE consortium. Specifically, the consortium includes the following pilots sites that will actively involve users under realistic settings:

• Three municipalities, namely TRONDHEIM Kommune (in Norway), Municipality/City of Forli (in Italy), Social Policy Center of the Municipality of Kifissia (in Greece).
• Three hospitals namely Hygeia Hospital in Greece, Morgagni Pierantoni Hospital in Italy and Fondazione Santa Lucia (also in Italy).
• One company providing access to users living in the residential home "Velluters" in Valencia in Spain.

Aged users may experience the system in both care centres as well as their homes.
The project will establish a common homogeneous and unified approach to cognitive training and social activation to be applied across all pilot sites. This unified approach will include common methodologies for technology development, service deployment, elderly cognitive assessment, validation and evaluation, which will be uniformly applied across all pilot sites.Following the end of the project, the service will be offered to other communities of aged people all over Europe, derived from the project’s marketing strategy and associated business plans.

Usage

Elderly users with mild dementia and cognitive problems will make use of the SOCIABLE services in their homes or in care centres. In those places appropriate surface computing devices comprising surface tables and Tablet PCs offering ergonomic mixed reality user interfaces will be provided. Elderly users will leverage these devices for:

• Individualized cognitive training based on games that will be configured and kept constantly adapted by their caretakers and/or expert operators,
• Collaborative (e.g., group based) cognitive training i.e. together with other users belonging to the same care centre.
• Social interaction with other elderly via the platform including a unique motivating system for bringing together, both physically and virtually, different elderly citizens

At the same time health professionals will also leverage SOCIABLE services in order to monitor and manage the health record of the elderly, while at the same time designing cognitive training sessions and social interactions.

Sustaining the service

The consortium has developed a preliminary business plan for exploitation and sustaining the service. This foresees that:

• Public authorities will pay the largest share of the cost for systems to be installed and operated in care centres.
• End-users will pay a share of the cost in order to participate in programmes running in private care centres. However, public authorities (e.g., public insurance) may also pay a portion of this cost leading to a mixed model.
• End-users will pay the cost of installing and operating an in-home portion of the system, which can be however partly subsidized. This leads to another variation of the mixed model.

The consortium includes members that are pertinent to all the above variations, in particular public authorities that operate care/leisure centres (e.g., Municipalities), private entities that will operate care centres and charge fees (e.g., Hygeia Hospital).

Note that the SOCIABLE business model and plan will gradually become more specific during the project evolution.

As already outlined the services will be offered by care service providers or a joint venture to be created by the consortium. End-users or public authorities will then have to pay these care service providers or the joint venture.

Technology

The SOCIABLE service will leverage both legacy and emerging ICT technologies, in particular:

• Ergonomically tested perceptive user interfaces based on a multi-touch surface table. This consists of a specially configured display, and software emulating the mixed reality environment. In addition to surface tables, the SOCIABLE services will be also deployed over Tablet PCs. Surface tables will be used in the care centres, while Tablet PCs (being a lower cost option) will be used for in-home deployments.
• Specialized software corresponding to cognitive training games and social interaction applications in a surface computing environment. This includes animation and graphics required to provide an expressive and user friendly interface.
• Relational databases and ontological descriptions (e.g., XML, W3C OWL Ontologies) for managing profiling and cognitive training data.
• Broadband networking enabling the interconnection of home and care centres.
• Various middleware components and technologies enabling the interconnection and interoperability between homes and care centres.

The project’s ICT infrastructure for ageing well will be based on state-of-the-art platforms for surface computing, including commercial multi-touch tables (notably the Microsoft Surface table). A variety of surface computing tables and devices are already commercially available, while several research prototypes have been also developed in the scope of research projects. SOCIABLE will select a commercial surface computing platform in order to better serve its pilot objectives and exploitation targets.

Content

The SOCIABLE ICT platform will leverage technical components and sample applications from the background commercial technological platform. The service will comprise additional content regarding cognitive training games. Part of the content will be reused in the scope of applications that will be developed over commercial surface infrastructures (i.e. the Microsoft Surface Platform). The consortium includes specialized game developers and providers (i.e. AIJU), application developers and integrators (i.e. SLG and CEDAF) as well as medical experts in the field (e.g., HYGEIA, AUSL, PREVI), who will provide the content and develop required tailored training games.

Additional Localization work regarding the content of the platform will be conducted in Norway, Greece, Italy and Spain by local partners.

Other

The SOCIABLE service will build upon commercial features and sample applications of the selected platform (i.e. the Microsoft Surface Platform), which offers a variety of sample applications utilizing advanced visualization and interaction interfaces. A non-exhaustive list of sample developments (source code available), which include games is available HERE

In general the Microsoft Surface Platform comes with a rich set of sample applications and utility libraries, which will be customized to the needs of the SOCIABLE cognitive training games. The SOCIABLE platform will substantially contribute to an enrichment of the elderly leisure time, while monitoring and enhancing cognitive abilities amongst elderly users.