T-Seniority

Transnational: Spain, Italy, Greece, UK, France, Cyprus and Finland.

01-07-2008

18-10-2010

The service's main objective was to create a “user-centric” integration of services, based on assistance programs for disadvantaged social groups. By focusing mainly on older people, "T-Seniority" aimed at covering health and social care needs in a wide range of service situations (home care, tele-assistance, mobile services, tele-alarms, nursing services).

T-Seniority is built on the results of Market Validation eTEN project SENIORITY (C510754) which successfully ended in 2006.

"T-Seniority" was submitted in the first call for proposal in 2007 and designated as a Pilot (type B), stimulating the uptake of innovative ICT services and products under "theme 2.2: ICT for ageing". It was supported and (partially) funded by the ICT Policy Support Programme (or ICT PSP) of the European Union, which is one of the 3 operational programmes of the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) to encourage the competitiveness of European companies.

It wanted also to help formal carers, local governments, primary care trusts, charities and local help groups interact with older people and properly answer to a growing social demand of home care, with possible positive effects also on the cost containment of the care system.

 Care Recipients
 Informal carers
 Paid assistants
 Formal carers

Not available

 Independent Living
 Information and learning for carers
 Personal Support and Social Integration for carer
 Care coordination

There were 4 service lines:

1. Integrated care e-Services: accessible via the TV Set-top Box (STB), touch screens and telephones: videos on health care, services for the elderly, entertainment materials such as video and audio books, links to useful sites on health information, tele-conferences and counselling.

2. General Public e-Care Services: large-scale broadcasts and access to general interest information provided by public administrations or general content providers such as health and transport information, a picture library, email, the ability to book an appointment with the general practitioner (GP ) and ordering repeat prescriptions.

3. Personalised e-Care Services: a module for requesting services (as transport/meal delivery). A tele-monitoring system alerts in case of emergency and monitors the living environment as well as individual vital parameters.

4. "Continuous human experience creation”: by dealing with complementary communication channels, e.g. mobile solutions for tele-alert management or touch-screens to ask for services.

Each kind of delivered service ran through specific devices:

1. Integrated care e-Services: accessible via the TV Set-top Box (STB), touch screens and telephones.

2. General Public e-Care Services: PC with Internet connection

3. Personalised e-Care Services: sensors for measuring vital parameters such as blood pressure and glycemia; environment detectors (fall detector, water and gas leakages detector) that send the alarm to the help centre in case of emergency.

4. Continuous human experience creation: mobile phones or touch-screens.

Both public and private

Public service funding: Government, Regional, Local Authorities, non-profit public entities

Regione Toscana (Italy), University of Siena (Italy), Prefecture of Thessaloniki (Greece), Kirklees MBC (UK).

European and international funds for research, development and implementation of innovative initiatives.

Other: please specify

Private companies, members of the research consortium: IDI EIKON SL (Spain), Impulsa TDT (Spain), Eurona SL (Spain), FNAQPA (France), Primetel (Cyprus), e-ISOTIS (Greece); Medineuvo OY (Finland), Tampereen Kaupunki (Finland).

As the economic sustainability was critical, the business strategy was to further involve third parts and integrate "T-Seniority" within the health and social services network supply.

The funding model of broadcast TV in Europe, apart the fee for public TV, was based mostly on advertising and people were reluctant to pay additional charges. However, in case of "T-Seniority", public care authorities and/or project partners promoting digital and social inclusion payed for the service in place of the end-user.

According to the Business strategy, in a second phase the service would have had to evolve to a mixed public-private model with sponsorship and publicity added into the business model.

The business plan's purpose was to offer interactivity on TV coordinating with the structural, technological and usability restrictions peculiar to set top boxes and remote control devices widely available in the market.

The strategy was to expand to the realm of TV the benefits of care e-Services to better reach those audiences that cannot be captured by using the traditional ICT channels (PCs, Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) such as palmtop or mobile phones).
The TV technology was left to the TV provider who met the requirements of the broadcaster i.e. avoiding multi-platform and ensuring a high quality of service with a free-to-air (FTA) or broadband connection.

The sustainability plan foresaw three main strategies: 1) addressing third parties as payers (mainly public administrations); 2) including "T-Seniority" into a wider offer of services; 3) reaching mass-market and scale small fees (mainly thanks to new iTV channels).

As far as the possibility of the initiative to sustain itself on the long term at the same quality level at the end of the project, a feasibility and assessment report at European level, was realised by the project consortium. However, the project was not able to continue when funding ended.

€ More than 500,000

Not available

 Authorities
 Private Care Sector
 Health and Social Care Systems
 Third Sector
 Private Companies

Not available

The Theotokos Foundation is a NGO operating in Athens from 1993 and was one of the project’s partner. The e-ISOTIS (Information Society Open to ImpairmentS) is a NGO operating in Cyprus. For T-seniority these organizations provided support in building

 Informal Carers
 Health Professionals
 Social Care Professionals
 Privately-Hired Care Assistants (inc. Migrant Care Workers)
 Volunteers

The T-Seniority team was made of health and social professionals from services run by local authorities, researchers from universitiesand technicians from private companies.

 

 

Not applicable

100,001 - 500,000

182,000 users of public services (with a low level of interaction between user and operator) and 1.600 users of personalized services (with a high level of interaction between user and operator) across all the partners countries involved:

• Spain: (30,000 – 500); Girona (12,000 – 100);
• Italy: Regione Toscana (60,000 – 400);
• Greece: Thesaloniki (1,000 – 100); Athens (1,000 – 100);
• UK: Kirklees (70,000 – 100);
• France: PACA-Lorraine (2,000 – 400);
• Cyprus: (8,000 – 100);
• Finland: Tampere (10,000 – 100)

During the 8 pilots T-Seniority public points were installed in places where old people were used to meet, such as elders' public centres.

T-Seniority promotion strategy was focused to show the service benefits by communicating its availability, affordability and accessibility

On 18^th October 2010 there was the T-Seniority final public workshop in Paris (details at http://tseniority.idieikon.com/index.php/lang-it/component/content/article/142).

The website, with its newsletters, was the main promotion channel.

Results from the pilots showed that the services were very appreciated by old people, impressed by the possibility of access interesting information and news. Old persons though the services made their life easier and more comfortable.

Many of the elderly involved in the pilots have been positively surprised by the possibility of choosing the contents and by the platform's interactivity, as well as by the capacity to communicate through TV (video-conference) (T-Seniority, 2009).

Not available

Not available

Strengths:

1. This was a user-friendly technology, offering a wide range of services connected to the public e-Care network.
2. The provided services were greatly accepted and they drove end users to demand more complex services. Thus "T-Seniority" provided not only simple services, but also sophisticated ones.
3. TV was an ideal vehicle for reaching people who were not PCs users and, as many elderly people, have impairments in vision, hearing, mobility or dexterity.
4. Personalized information and services were more directly connected with the public care system (in terms of e-Care), through a traditional instrument easily used by older people.
5. At the end of November 2010 were gathered 800 questionnaires and 8 pilots in seven European countries within a validation study carried out by the T-Seniority consortium. The major validation results achieved were: a Final Deployment Plan formulated from the outcomes of the validation activities; a spin-off company at the end of the project for the initial deployment of the Services in Spain. The Market Validation concluded with the conviction that “SENIORITY solution” was a new and valid, cost effective proposition.

Weaknesses:

1. Not all care e-Services were available on every TV platform, as it depended on the level of interactivity of each TV delivery mechanism.
2. The project did not become an operative and integrated service.
3. The project has not been evaluated in terms of effects on labour market and National Health System. The evidence of positive effects may have had a good impact also on the decision of local governments of financing a second phase of the project in order to make it operational in the whole e-care system.

Opportunities:

1. The project has been a chance for building an international network of organisations interested in implementing ICT usage among old people and their carers in order to improve their quality of life. This relationship may lead to further initiatives.

Their implementation in the partnership countries (Italy, Greece, Spain, UK, France, Finland and Cyprus), suggests that the project may have had good chances of becoming an operational service fully integrated into the care system. Nevertheless, this did not happen and the provided services ended with the end of funding. Currently T-Seniority continues to live in Adsum+, a service “in the market” in Spain, outside the project framework.

References:

T-Seniority (2009), Newsletter n° 2, available at http://tseniority.idieikon.com/images/documents/newsletter_2.pdf

T-Seniority (2010), Newsletter n° 4, available at http://tseniority.idieikon.com/images/documents/newsletter_4.pdf

Resources:

http://tseniority.idieikon.com/

T-Seniority (2010), Expanding the benefits of Information Society to Older People through digital TV channels, T-Seniority final public workshop in Paris, available at http://tseniority.idieikon.com/images/documents/tseniority_idi_workshop2.pdf

Update by Mr Miguel Alborg, IDI EIKON Manager and Mr Angelo Marcotulli regione Toscana Manager

Telephone: 0039 055 4383095

e-mail: angelo.marcotulli@regione.toscana.it