Ongoing demographical and social changes in most European countries will result in a dramatic increase in emergency situations and missions within the next years. Already today, 44% of emergency medical services (EMS) system resources are dedicated to patients over 70 years.
On the downside, this will result in higher costs for the EMS, which already have to cope with cost restrictions today, in substantially diminished service quality, or, in all probability, in both of these. Unfortunately, a high quality and affordable EMS in case of an emergency is an essential prerequisite for the independent life of elderly people in their preferred environment.
EMERGE tries to improve emergency assistance through early detection and proactive prevention. Ambient and unobtrusive sensing is used to enhance user acceptance. As a consequence, the quality of life for elderly people can increase. Costs for EMS can be leveraged for the elderly as well as for public health and society.
The main goal of EMERGE is to develop and implement a model for recurring behaviors and experiences of elderly people following an integrated approach in order to detect deviations from their typical behavior and to reason on acute disorders in their health condition.
The project's objectives are, therefore, to
- identify and model the most promising application scenarios for integrated emergency assistance,
- transfer the emergency model into an application design, identify and engineer suitable ambient information technology,
- engineer an adequate system architecture and platform, and
- validate the models and the engineered system in laboratory and field trials.
For further information, please visit:
http://www.emerge-project.eu
Project co-ordinator:
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Angewandten Forschung e.V.
Partners:
- Siemens Aktiengesellschaft (Germany)
- Westpfalz-Klinikum GmbH (Germany)
- Information Society Open to Impairments e-Isotis (Greece)
- Bay Zoltan Alkalmazott Kutatasi Kozalapitvany (Hungary)
- Art of Technology AG (Switzerland)
- Europäisches Microsoft Innovations Center GmbH (Germany)
- National Centre for Scientific Research "Demokritos" (Greece)
- Medizinische Universität Graz (Austria)
Timetable: from 01/02/2007 - 31/10/2009
Total cost: € 4.012.690
EC funding: € 2.449.964
Instrument: STREP
Project Identifier: IST-2005-045056