SMILE

The SMILE project has been granted ca 4Million Euros from the EU’s Horizon 2020 Program, and ca 1,8 Million Euros from CIHR – the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, for the period of January 2021 to September 2024.

The SMart Inclusive Living Environments (SMILE) project will support ageing in place for older people by combining an innovative smart living environment (SLE) ecosystem model and a set of complementary eHealth solutions co-created with older people. SMILE will innovate better ways of independent living to provide timely care and assistance when needed at home.

We will create and demonstrate an SLE ecosystem across 4 pilot sites (Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands and Canada) for a very heterogeneous group, i.e. older people with dementia, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and care transitions during post-surgery recovery. Specifically, our SLE ecosystem will provide infrastructure, that not only supports older people to live independently and relatively actively, but also fosters collaboration and learning between older people and members of their circles of care.

This will be achieved by EU-Canadian cooperation on:

• the Digital Care Facilitator an AI-based integration system
• a conversational agent as an everyday intermediary between the older person, family, friends and other members of their circles of care
• personal mHealth apps, and eHealth monitors and devices.

These will support older people and their circles of care to adapt to changing circumstances, needs, preferences and for older people to self or co-manage their condition(s).

SMILE will lead to better coordination of care and support establishing market “pull” requiring technological solutions, organizational and policy adaption. We will demonstrate that our ecosystem works for aged people with various diseases and care needs and thus SMILE results and products will benefit very heterogeneous populations of older people in our societies.

Project period: January 2021 – September 2024.