SOFTEC : the Swedish open facility for technology in elder care

Due to the aging demographics phenomenon, eldercare constitutes a major application domain for research in robotics, artificial intelligence, sensor systems, and telemedicine. Insights from several rather distant research fields are required to obtain products that are acceptable and maximally useful. Relevant complementary perspectives stem from medicine, the theory and practice of participatory evaluation, and technology providers. All of these actors need to cooperate in order to develop products which receive the approval of society and the interest of the healthcare infrastructure. Rather than continuing on separate tracks, research and development in eldercare technology needs to be provided with a reference point. SOFTEC, the Swedish Open Facility for Technology in Elderly Care, aims to provide such a reference point in Sweden and in Europe. Its goal is to develop shared facilities where researchers can jointly study, develop and evaluate technological solutions aimed at increasing the independence and quality of life of elderly people. The organizational structure of SOFTEC is a federation of projects. Within each project, work is expected to follow a usercentered approach, in which the technology development cycle is coupled to the user evaluation cycle (see Fig. 1, left). The coupling is typically provided by a series of Prototypes, which are used within both cycles. Notice that this is a very generic schema: depending on the project, the “prototype” can be anything from a conceptual video to a pre-market product. The knowledge, methodological, software and physical resources of SOFTEC are meant to be openly accessible to the Swedish and international research community. In a truly open spirit, partners who make use of the SOFTEC facilities are expected in return to contribute the development of those facilities or the creation of new ones.