As life expectancy continues to increase in most EU Member States, smart technologies can help enable older people to continue living at home, despite the challenges accompanying the ageing process. The Innovation Action (IA) SHAPES 'Smart and Healthy Ageing through People Engaging in Supportive Systems' funded by the EU under the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (grant agreement number 857159) attends to these topics to support active and healthy ageing and the wellbeing of older adults. This protocol article outlines the SHAPES project's objectives and aims, methods, structure, and expected outcomes. SHAPES seeks to build, pilot, and deploy a large-scale, EU-standardised interoperable, and scalable open platform. The platform will facilitate the integration of a broad range of technological, organisational, clinical, educational, and social solutions. SHAPES emphasises that the home is much more than a house-space; it entails a sense of belonging, a place and a purpose in the community. SHAPES creates an ecosystem - a network of relevant users and stakeholders - who will work together to scale-up smart solutions. Furthermore, SHAPES will create a marketplace seeking to connect demand and supply across the home, health and care services. Finally, SHAPES will produce a set of recommendations to support key stakeholders seeking to integrate smart technologies in their care systems to mediate care delivery. Throughout, SHAPES adopts a multidisciplinary research approach to establish an empirical basis to guide the development of the platform. This includes long-term ethnographic research and a large-scale pan-European campaign to pilot the platform and its digital solutions within the context of seven distinct pilot themes. The project will thereby address the challenges of ageing societies in Europe and facilitate the integration of community-based health and social care. SHAPES will thus be a key driver for the transformation of healthcare and social care services across Europe.

• Klíčová slova
• Healthy ageing, assistive technologies, care, data protection, digital technologies, ethics, ethnography, integrated care, interoperability, medical devices, older adults, open ecosystems, quality of life, scalability, socio-technical systems, standardisation, transdisciplinary,
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH

INTRODUCTION: Assistive technology (AT) is important for the achievement of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) for persons with disabilities (PWD). Increasingly, studies suggest a significant gap between the need for and demand for and provisions of AT for PWD in low-income and middle-income settings. Evidence from high income countries highlights the importance of robust AT policies to the achievement of the recommendations of the World Health Assembly on AT. In Malawi, there is no standalone AT policy. The objectives of the Assistive Product List Implementation Creating Enablement of inclusive SDGs (APPLICABLE) project, are to propose and facilitate the development of a framework for creating effective national AT policy and specify a system capable of implementing such policies in low-income countries such as Malawi. METHOD AND ANALYSIS: We propose an action research process with stakeholders in AT in Malawi. APPLICABLE will adopt an action research paradigm, through developing a shared research agenda with stakeholders and including users of AT. This involves the formation of an Action Research Group that will specify the priorities for practice-and policy-based evidence, in order to facilitate the development of contextually realistic and achievable policy aspirations on AT in Malawi and provide system strengthening recommendations that will ensure that the policy is implementable for their realisation. We will undertake an evaluation of this policy by measuring supply and support for specific AT prior to, and following the implementation of the policy recommendations. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: The study protocol was approved by Maynooth University Research Ethics Committee (SRESC-2019-2378566) and University of Malawi Research Ethics Committee (P.01/20/10). Findings from the study will be disseminated by publication in peer-reviewed journals, presentations to stakeholders in Malawi, Ireland and international audiences at international conferences.

• Klíčová slova
• health policy, public health, rehabilitation medicine, social medicine,
• MeSH
• celosvětové zdraví * MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• trvale udržitelný rozvoj * MeSH
• výzkum zdravotnických služeb MeSH
• zdravotní politika MeSH
• Check Tag
• lidé MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH
• práce podpořená grantem MeSH
• Geografické názvy
• Irsko MeSH
• Malawi MeSH