An Open, Extendable Service Platform for the Elderly

Addressing the needs of the elderly is a challenging but imperative task in most Western societies. There is general consensus that the best way to improve this situation is the progressive introduction of technical aids to allow users achieving a more independent life. However, senior citizens frequently have difficulties to make use of the advances in our modern information society technology because it requires that they need to learn from scratch how to use some sort of specific terminal. Elderly users demand specially designed interfaces that are: simple, affordable, always ready, integrate easily in their living environment and offer a single access point for all services. In order to cope with these difficulties, the VITAL project proposes a combination of advanced information and communication technologies that uses a familiar device like the TV as the main vehicle for the delivery of internet services to elderly users in home environments. In this paper, we describe the platform architecture, as well as the web-based applications and their integration into the platform.