Objective
The project will develop a prototype of telecommunications based alarm and awareness product for outdoors and indoors personal use.
The project looks at the state-of-the-art in alarm provision for the elderly and disabled and at the likely development path of care in this sector of the care-industry with particular reference to technical and telecommunications developments. The information will be gathered during surveys of the main European markets for care products and services, their procurement structures, and the likely developments of the relevant component technologies and telecommunications infrastructures and regulations. It utilises this information on care structures and the market for alarm and awareness products to develop a new product which combines both fixed and mobile telecommunications features and provides a state-of-the-art alarm and awareness service/product for elderly and disabled people. The alarms can for example be for fire, evacuation, or a civil defence public warning.
The prototype is intended for hearing-impaired, deaf or deaf-blind people who need to receive the alarm in the form of a visual and/or tactile signal. The system can be used in different environments, indoors as well as outdoors (e.g. while travelling or at the workplace), public and private.
Specifically the prototype product will be in the form of a wristwatch (which can still act as a real watch), a central response unit which can be connected to the (ESPRIT) Home Bus and which responds to alarms (e.g. from the fire security system) by sending out a radio alarm signal to the wristwatch, as well as a nightbooster that is able to pick up acoustic alarms e.g. signals from a fire-alarm, telephone or alarm clock and transmit them in appropriate form (e.g. vibration, display). The prototype is envisaged to be complemented by existing home-care and support services.
The project will test this prototype product/service as an ideal test environment based on the ESPRIT-backed Home System. It will also be tested in a home-care network environment within the network operated by the lead partner. The components of the system are to be tested in a comparative context - ie similar or potentially competitive products are tested in the test-house and comparative performance and user acceptance data is generated.
Finally the project seeks to develop user acceptance and an exploitation plan to ensure that the ultimate product/service is rapidly deployed in the European and other markets.
The impact of the project is likely to be felt mostly in the elderly and disabled care categories. The project provides, for the first time, comprehensive base-line information on the European market for alarm and awareness products and services for the elderly and disabled. This will be made available to the TIDE community and will serve as a valuable guide to market related issues in future TIDE work. It is expected that the ultimate product/service, building on the knowledge generated by the surveys, will be amongst the first to take advantage of a European market, as distinct from fragmented national markets, for alarms and awareness services for the elderly and disabled.
The project partners are major suppliers of such services in national markets and will use the opportunity of the TIDE cooperation to develop the capability to distribute products and services to a unified market in Europe.
Programme(s)
Topic(s)
Data not availableCall for proposal
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B98 9NS Redditch
United Kingdom