ICT 2010 in Brussels 27-29 September 2010

Europe's most visible forum for ICT research and innovation

This biennial event has become a unique gathering point for researchers, business people, investors, and high level policy makers in the field of digital innovation. ICT 2010 will focus on policy priorities such as Europe's Digital Agenda and the next financial programme of the European Union for funding research and innovation in ICT.

Towards an open service platform and standards promoting integrated and interoperable AAL applications

ICT 2010 will host dozens of networking sessions designed to facilitate contacts between researchers and innovators, engineers and investors from all fields of digital innovation.

This networking session is centered on creating a single, open platform for AAL.

Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) refers to ICT solutions that will help elderly individuals to improve their quality of life, stay healthier, live independently for longer.

After introducing the session with an overall picture of AAL needs and roadmapping, we will discuss the rationale for proposing a common service platform for AAL, the consequent benefits for value chains, and the needed resources for converging on technologies as well as on application interfaces. We will also discuss the opportunity of giving birth to an Open Source initiative for the development of the envisioned service platform as well as to a consensus-building forum for specifying application interfaces. At a more technical level, the session will discuss the chances for ontology-driven approaches to facilitate interoperability and content sharing between AAL services.

The objective is to open a fruitful discussion by presenting the issues for the creation of a sustainable AAL ecosystem, from different perspectives:

  • At the policy level, the EU Commission is committed to support AAL. To which extent can it help to build consensus between stakeholders? To which extent public institutions and governments are required to regulate and stimulate the market?
  • At the standardization / market-level, we need to define the suite of protocols, interfaces, services, data types (e.g. ontologies), and guidelines that define the AAL domain. Given that this level should be technology-agnostic, which policy framework is the right one to achieve the expected interoperability? Which standardization initiatives are needed to bridge the existing gaps in AAL and in some cases to overcome the problem of a plethora of competing standards which are often even contradicting each other? Is there a relevant business model that should be identified and selected to push the creation of an AAL mass market?
  • At the infrastructure level, should we use an existing infrastructure or new ones should be identified? Can the core framework of an AAL platform (middleware) be considered a commodity? Can an Open Source approach foster the collaboration among competitors and spread production costs over a multiplicity of stakeholders?