28 Jun Highlights from the Pharaon – A Digital Future for Healthy Ageing – Conference

Posted at 12:15h in News by

The Pharaon – A Digital Future for Healthy Ageing – Conference was successfully held on 26 June in Florence, Italy and online in conjunction with the 13° Forum Italian Ambient Assisted Living. About 100 participants – health and social care professionals, industry representatives, policy makers, researchers and representatives of older people – joined the event in-person and nearly 300 views were registered online.

The final conference provided the opportunity to learn more about the Pharaon pilot results and lessons learnt, the impact of the project, experiences from other large-scale pilots and a round table with policy makers on active and healthy ageing policy. The exhibition space allowed participants to test solutions implemented in the context of Pharaon.

The conference was opened by Pharaon Coordinator Filippo Cavallo, University of Florence, highlighting the opportunity of this conference to share and to create a connexion with different stakeholders and start discussion and exploitation of the project’s services. His opening was complemented by Pietro Siciliano, IMM-CNR & Cluster SMILE and Serena Spinelli, Assessore Welfare Tuscany Region who highlighted that care is a community responsibility.

The first session focused on “Innovation in Action: Pharaon pilot results”. The Pharaon project was introduced, followed by presenting the global Pharaon results and success stories from the pilots:

  • Use of technology positively improved quality of life and loneliness in the experimental group.
  • Pharaon solutions usability, negative correlated with users’ perceived Loneliness, decreases with age and improves with time.
  • The Quality of life of caregivers positively correlated with higher education and technology experience.

The presentations in this session were complemented by short videos giving participants of the Pharaon pilots a voice as to how Pharaon has impacted their lives.

The impact of Pharaon was also the focus of the next session “Transforming care and lives: Pharaon’s journey towards sustainable impact and market solutions”. Pharaon’s impact assessment and cost-effectiveness results were shared, followed by Pharaon’s market place CATAALOG and the impact Pharaon had in the area of standardisation.

The last session in the morning focused on “Innovation in Europe: achievements from large scale pilots” including lessons learnt and recommendations from Pharaon, Gatekeeper, SHAPES, ACTIVAGE and VALUECARE, with a closing statement by Eleonora Vanni, President of LegaCoopSociali, highlighting the success factors for technology in active and healthy ageing.

This topic was further elaborated in the afternoon roundtable with policy makers “Exploring the future of active and healthy ageing policy” with contributions from Leonardo Marras, Assessore Economia e Attività Produttive Tuscany Region; Valentina Romano, Director of Welfare Department Apulia Region; Gianna Elisa Berlingerio, Director of Economic Development Department Apulia Region; Álvaro Hernando-Hernando, Policy Officer at EU AI Office; Raffaele Spallone, Dirigente del Ministero delle Imprese e del Made in Italy and Pietro Siciliano, IMM-CNR & Cluster SMILE.

The last session of the Pharaon conference was also the first one of the 13° Forum Italian Ambient Assisted Living (ForItAAL): 5 papers from Pharaon partners that had been accepted by ForItAAL on research innovations were presented and received many questions and engagement from the audience.

The Pharaon – A Digital Future for Healthy Ageing – Conference was a great opportunity to share the impact, results and success stories from Pharaon with stakeholders, engage with policy makers and extend the ecosystem for the sustainability of the project.