REAAL

Description

ReAAL (make it ReAAL) is a European CIP project within the VII Marco Programme. The project is formed by a consortium of 19 partners, Fraunhofer IGD in Germany being the project coordinator; the project is planned to have a duration of 36 months.

The ReAAL project aims to deploy a critical mass of AAL (Ambient Assisted Living) applications and services for approximately 7000 users in 7 European countries, based on the universAAL platform previously developped with the support of the European Commission, with the intention of creating a market for interoperable services, applications and AAL devices.

ReAAL will facilitate an emerging AAL ecosystem, demonstrating the usefulness of the universAAL platform and disseminating related technical knowledge throughout a community sharing associated interests. ReAAL will establish a multi-dimensional methodology of evaluation to measure the impact of the implementation of the AAL ecosystem in relation to social, economic and health indicators.

The end users and the groups targeted by this AAL ecosystem are: the general public, formal and informal carers, service providers, technology providers and politicians. The beneficiaries will be those people who wish to avoid dependence on nursing homes, and who prefer to continue living autonomously in their own homes. The project will be carried out through a series of pilot schemes, each one having a different focus. The help provided is that which is needed in any aspect of daily life; from general safety to supporting social integration and mobility.

ReAAL will adapt the universAAL open platform, which will be used by the service providers to develop interoperable services, avoiding subordination to manufacturers. The project foresees numerous scenarios: In the case of the service provider wanting to integrate one of his current services, the technology providers will use the guides and the training material to encourage connection with the platform. Once this interconnection has been achieved, the service offered will take advantage of the interoperable characteristics of the platform and use/provide information from/to other services thereby integrating into a more complex value chain. In the case of someone wanting to implement a new service, the designers will be able to create more innovative and profitable solutions without the need of starting from zero. The developpers will take advantage of available technology that may be useful for their proposals.

In the case of one of the native services on the platform being delivered, the buyers will have the guarantee of choosing a proven technology with a great capacity for extension and integration.

The TSB group (Technology for Health and Wellbeing at the ITACA Institute) is the technical coordinator for ReAAL and leader of the Work Package dedicated to the provision of the platform. Also, due to its experience developping AAL servcies using the universAAL platform, TSB will be the coordinator of the Spanish pilot group providing orientation and support to those local interest groups to which the applications will be offered.