Country profiles

There are a number of fields of ICT deployment where technologies and applications are relatively mature and where a certain level of market progress can be detected, even if many barriers seem still to remain. Core application domains that have relevance to this study can be distinguished as follows:

  • ‘Social alarm’ is the term used to describe a service (and associated equipment) that enables help to be called by an older person when needed. The service typically involves a special telephone or portable alarm device that can be used to make a call to an alarm centre in the event of a need arising (e.g. a fall). Social alarms have frequently been called ‘first generation telecare’. Often, but not always, more advanced telecare services are developed as add-ons to the basic social alarm services and are implemented over the social alarm infrastructure.
  • The term ‘telecare’’ is used to describe a range of enhancements to the basic social alarm service concept. For our purposes, telecare is concerned with the provision of social care (i.e. non medical services) to the home. Typical examples include the provision of various sensors in the home (e.g. fall detectors, bed/chair occupancy sensors, smoke, gas and flood detectors, and so on) that alert social care services in the event of a problem arising in the home. In addition, videophone-based or other remote social care to the home can also be considered to be forms of telecare. Such applications have frequently been called ‘second generation telecare’, whereas the term ‘third generation telecare’ has been used  to describe ICT-based solutions of more preventative nature such as extensive sensoring in the home for the purposes of ‘lifestyle monitoring’.
  • The term ‘telehealth’ is used in this study to refer to the use of ICTs in the delivery of medically-oriented care services to older people in their homes. It can include a variety of somewhat different services or applications, including telemonitoring (e.g. blood pressure, blood glucose, ECG, etc.), teleconsultation (e.g. online, by videophone, by telephone) and telerehabilitation (e.g. by videophone), as well as self-care devices to be used by people in their own homes to help them monitor and manage their health themselves. They are often, but not always, developed and implemented independent of telecare solutions, in part because of the traditionally separate organisation of and demarcation lines between medical care and social care.
  • ‘Smart homes’ is the term now commonly used to describe a range of environmental control, home automation and home network systems that can help older people to remain living independently in their own homes. In addition to such ’systems’, there are also a variety of more standalone ICT-based assistive technologies that can help older people to remain independent, including computer-based or other electronic communication aids, object locators, reminder systems and so on.

One part of the study focused especially on developing an evidence-based view of the ‘market’ situation according to these sub-domains across 16 countries in Europe and beyond. This concerns the level of deployment that has been achieved so far as well as other market features. The information provided here was compiled through an extensive programme of data gathering by national correspondents in each of the countries, augmented by centralised desk-research by the core study team. Even with this dual approach, however, it can sometimes be challenging to gain a completely comprehensive and reliable picture of the situation in a given country. A major factor in this is the overall lack of coherence of the field of enquiry and the associated lack of systematic documentation of what is happening on the ground in many cases. However, while there may inevitably be some gaps and some selectivity in the country-level information presented in the following sections, as far as we are aware it nevertheless represents the first systematic and balanced benchmarking effort to have been conducted in this field. As such, it is expected to provide a useful basis for supporting the further development of EU policy in this field. Interested stakeholders can comment and provide additional material on the situation in their country.