As a result of various studies, it is known (OECD 2011) that in many countries, the provision of social and health services is fragmented, and is based more on the provider rather than on the target group. Although the number of users of social services has increased, they are still used by a relatively small proportion of the elderly. The aim of this project “Age-friendly society – Innovation, education and technological solutions” [AIET] is to develop a review, a course program and innovative solutions and or/prototypes in the field of health promotion and active-ageing. The project is aimed at ageing people whose well-being is being promoted through: higher education institutions, businesses and organizations providing communities health and social services, local municipalities. To reach this goal the project focuses on transnational cooperation between partners with different experience and know-how to learn from one another and exchange practices. The project Innovative side is the innovative solutions or prototypes that help elderly to age actively and prevent them from becoming helpless in the future. The activities planned under the project have all the intended results: - One (1) mapping of the best/innovative practices (completed review) with complimenting articles that will lead to identification of the needs of different countries to improve the well-being of the elderly. - At least three (3) innovative product /service solutions and/or prototypes that have been developed to improve the quality of life of the elderly people. - One (1) active-ageing design course on health and social service theme that has been developed for higher education institutions in all partner countries. - Two (2) multiplier events on the results of the project has taken place.
The project is directed to engage elderly people and the increase of their life quality by creating innovative professional skills for future elderly care. Social inclusion gives older adults a sense of purpose, of accomplishment and of belonging to the community. It allows older adults to stay active and to continue to contribute to the development of society based on their needs, preferences and abilities. Our activities inside the project are addressed to increase the social inclusion of the elderly population. Our hope and aim was to create new digital solutions for the elderly, but as we saw through the process of developing new solutions for the elderly, the students mainly focused on the solutions that didn’t have the aspect of digital innovation in them. Nevertheless there were ideas that contained digital aspects but they weren't that hi-tech and the reason was that elderly people don’t want more digital devices or digital solutions around them. As part of the studies involved the integration with the target group, there was a good opportunity to inquire directly from them about their wishes and needs and they expressed their opinion to prefer services and solutions that include the human factor rather than technology.
The number of elderly people needing services is predicted to rise considerably over coming decades. As a result, competences and new innovative solutions for promoting health and well-being of the elderly in the future are needed. We have felt for a long time that cross-disciplinary coherence is extremely important in curriculum development and that in the future our health promotion specialists would need more of the knowledge from the design field. We knew that there are specialists working and studying in the field of health promotion who, unfortunately, do not have a so-called designer's view of things. Our goal with this project was to get an overview of good practices in the field of health promotion among project partner countries and more precisely in the field of the active aging, and to develop a course where students studying health promotion or similar curricula would acquire skills in the field of design thinking, in order to develop even better solutions based on the specifics of their specialty.