Is AAL the evolution away from traditional Healthcare??

Inspired by a exhibition booth i saw at the World of Health IT in Barcelona, AAL (just mispelled) is supposed to be an evolution. Or is it a revolution? The telemedicine/eHealth / pHealth call their end users "patients". AAL prefers to refer to citizens, relatives, carers.... My own opinion is that the goal for Europe should be to reduce the numbers of hospitals beds with 50% in 10 years. That will be a highly needed revolution of thinking, to make the change of mindset away from mainframe health care to AAL (As Intel claims is needed), having a total change of focus on to prevention and pro active healthcare. AAL is in my opinion much broader than eHealth. What do you think: Are the end users "Citizens" or Patients?? How broad do you consider the concept of Ambient Assisted Living. Are you an user? Do you want to be called a patient, when you use your iPhone to monitor your sleep?? What do you think??

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Permalink Reply by Luca Odetti on May 11, 2010 at 16:03

Hi Claus,
well, in my opinion, it seems that AAL is finally succeeding in setting itself free from the cumbersome heritage of telemedicine. And it hasn't been child's play.

It was January 2008 when we started, in the AALIANCE project, describing the AAL realm, and identifying its domains and scenarios. And I remember very well that constant feeling, as if we were trying to negotiate our way out from a maelstrom: whatever effort we did, to focus on non-health topics, the attractive force of AAL/eHealth/pHealth always seemed to be overwhelming.
I regret a little, that I had to abandon AALIANCE during its last year, but I am glad to see that , despite all, the results are there now. And eHealth/pHealth/telemedicine are there, together with a lot of other application domains, and some don't have anything to do with health at all.

Of course, there are still lots of issues, probably related more to service provision models and policies, to standards and to business models than to technology, but in two years a big step ahead has been made.

And yes, I totally agree with you.
AAL is not an evolution. It's a change of paradigm.