Germany has a very diverse and rich research and development pace in the field of Telemedicine and Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) systems, but broad application is often difficult to be implemented.
This was the conclusion of the international forum ‘Technology.Social.Health’ (‘Technik.Soziales.Gesundheit’, in German) organised by the Institute for Work and Technology, in Bremen, in early December 2010, as part of the conference ‘Knowledge.Language.Technology – Care connects’ (‘Wissen.Sprache.Technik – Pflege verbindet’ in German).
As the international contributions showed in the forum – supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research – the Netherlands, Denmark, South Korea and Japan although they started the development of telemedicine and AAL-solutions later than Germany, they were faster in their implementation.
The reasons for this greater drive vary. The fact that technical solutions are not seen as an end but as a means for developing social and organisational solutions is of great importance.
The renowned ‘Smart Ageing International Research Centre of Tohoku University’, in Tokyo, Japan tries, through new ways of memory training, to prevent mental confusion in elderly people and for this has achieved success in medical studies.
Currently, the team works in this field in order to find ways in which this kind of approaches of training memory could be widely used with the assistance of smart phones and other similar applications. During the conference, an interest in German-Japanese cooperation was also expressed.
The contributions from the Netherlands and Canada in particular showed successful links between social and technical components in remote care, not only of elderly people. In the course of the conference, the representatives discussed the aspect of technology and social issues and hoped for a close co-operation with prospective future projects.
Source: ePractice EU