Affordable Assisted Living Technologies for the Elderly

From experience I can say that it is relatively easy to put together a workshop or an event, but the real challenge actually lies in following up on doing what we said we’d do; capturing the essence of what comes out of the discussions and then maintaining the relationships with stakeholders and partners with whom we’ve worked with to put together the event.

I’m delighted to say that through a UK-India Affordable Assisted Living Technologies (ALTs) for the Elderly workshop that we are putting together next month in Bangalore, we are doing what we had committed to do (in terms of helping facilitate UK-India partnerships in the area of ageing research), at our previous UK-India ageing research exploratory workshop in Mumbai, this year.

ALTs for older people were one of the three main areas that were explored at our first workshop and was thought to be a potential one in terms of initiating collaborative partnerships between the two countries. How can this be achieved? Who are the main players and who influence the take up of technologies by the elderly? What are the main disabilities amongst the elderly in India and the UK? Does the UK have the technologies needed to help fulfill the needs of the elderly in the Indian context? ALTs and innovations that exist is India – this and much more will be discussed at the forthcoming workshop in Bangalore. If this of interest to you, this is one workshop that you would not want to miss.

The UK delegation who will be speaking at this workshop include Professor Mark Hawley from the University of Sheffield, Ms Patricia Holley from the University of Bristol, Professor Christina Victor from the University of Brunel and Dr Sarah Hillcoat Nalletamby from Swansea University. Besides academic experts, we also aim to have representation from companies, government organisations and charity organisations – both from the UK and India.

At our previous workshop, a lot of ideas were discussed in terms of usage of technologies for the elderly and reaching it out to them. Some of them included the involvement of older people while planning and designing of low cost technologies, so that technology developers are better aware of their perspectives and would then be more likely to develop technologies that would be more practical and easily used by the elderly.

In India, the trend seems to be now shifting from the traditional joint-family set-up, where families need to stay away from elderly parents on account of jobs or other factors. It was realised that such groups also contribute to an important customer base to be considered and their perspectives would be useful while developing technologies. Many such interesting points surfaced through the discussions at the previous workshop and through our next workshop in Bangalore, we hope to take it to the next level of discussions where we will purely focus on low cost ALTs for the elderly.

Given the expertise and a rising need to address this important issue in both countries, it seems only fitting and an opportune time to identify areas where potential UK-India collaborations could be initiated in order to capitalise on technological solutions to meet the needs of the elderly.

To that end, I’ll be working with my colleagues in UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) and Indian partners to organise this one-day UK-India workshop which will run in the margins of the 3rd World Congress on Ageing that will take place in Bangalore on 17, 18 and 19 November 2014.

If you’d like to participate at our workshop, please do drop me a line. I hope to see you in Bangalore!

What: UK-India workshop on affordable assisted living technologies for the elderly
When: Wednesday, 19 November 2014
Where: Bangalore