Operating Grant : Active and Assisted Living Program
Well-being, Health and Biomedical Discovery
Deadlines
Academic Unit: Inquire with your unit
Memorial Deadline: Friday 15th, May 2020
External Deadline: Friday 22nd, May 2020
Description
SIRI will be offering support with application development for this opportunity. Prospective applicants are encouraged to contact Jennifer Stevens (v5js@mun.ca) early during the development process to discuss the services available to them.
As stated in CIHR’s Strategic Plan, Health Research Roadmap II: Capturing Innovation to Produce Better Health and Health Care for Canadians, CIHR wants to seize the momentum and contribute to innovative, evidence-informed eHealth solutions that will improve patient experiences, health outcomes and the sustainability of the health care system, as well as engage with the international community. As a way of expanding the opportunities for funding and engagement in international markets for ideas and industries, this program enables CIHR to leverage the value of its funding investments by participating in transnational joint calls in eHealth research.
This funding opportunity lies within the scope of the International component of CIHR’s eHealth Innovations Initiative (eHII). The Active and Assisted Living Programme (AAL) provides Canada with an established and successful mechanism to foster international collaborations and offers the opportunity to engage diverse communities in generating transformative eHealth solutions.
The AAL Calls for proposals provide a targeted funding mechanism for the development as well as the integration of ICT-based solutions (both products and services) into the social fabric of a particular region and/or health and care environment. This AAL Call responds not only to the challenges and opportunities of ageing well, but also provides another support angle to the health and care system, particularly at local and regional level. The smart solutions for healthy ageing funded under the AAL Programme should be designed to address the respective wishes/aspirations and needs identified by end-users as well as being both transnational and collaborative with a cost-sharing approach between private and public funding.
Call Rationale
Regional and national health and care systems in Europe and internationally are under increasing financial and human resources pressures primarily due to demographic changes, insufficient health and social care workers, together with a significant increase in demand for care and support services.
To address these challenges, this call is promoting a life course approach to health and wellbeing. In addition to a focus on older adults, proposals could consider the applicability of the proposed solutions to other population groups where appropriate, for example the transition phase from a working life to retirement.
Proposed solutions should meet the needs of end-users, be it seniors, their carers or institutions providing care. Innovative approaches to deployment and adoption of ICT services should be part of the solution development alongside the development of the new ICT /digital products, as well as their integration into the regional socio-economic context.
VISION ON HEALTHY AGEING – Quality of life concepts such as ‘positive health’, which describes health as the ability to adapt and self-manage in light of physical, emotional and social challenges, or ‘healthy ageing’, developed by the World Health Organization, can provide guidance in the development of solutions to support older adults. The environment (home, neighbourhood, community, health and care support), of each person, is of crucial importance, as it changes over time and is highly dependent on organisational, economic and social contexts.
HOW TO TACKLE THE CHALLENGE – It is generally recognized that ICT-based solutions have the potential to enhance different aspects of the quality of life of older adults, as well as transform and improve the long-term sustainability of the health and social care systems. Yet, the development of ICT based solutions on their own cannot guarantee a proper adoption and integration by the end-user or market uptake. A condition for adoption success of ICT-based products is their integration into service delivery models or in the end-user’s local/regional network.
THE IMPORTANCE OF ECOSYSTEMS – To tackle the abovementioned challenge, supporting and strengthening existing and emerging ecosystems supporting healthy ageing is needed. To make this successful, an approach encompassing the creation of sufficiently large marketplaces by involving an appropriate variety of end-users, as well as researchers, manufacturers, large Industry, administration and policy representatives, is required. An important part of this approach shall be substantial knowledge transfer between stakeholders, extensive supply chain networks, and greater awareness of the needs and situation of other stakeholders. All this should support the implementation and scaling up of AAL solutions.
Although the AAL Call 2020 is supporting two types of projects, CIHR will only be funding Collaborative Projects. A Collaborative Project has a duration of a minimum of 12 to a maximum of 30 months, with maximum funding per project from the AAL Programme of €2,500,000. The number of partners should be from 3 to 10, from at least 3 different participating countries. Collaborative Projects funded under Call 2020 will be operating in technology readiness levels (TRL) 5-8.
For more information, and the full call text consult the Active and Assisted Living website or Research Net.