Welcome to AAL Forum 2010 in the Region of Southern Denmark

The coming decade will see the number of elderly citizens increase significantly while the number of employees in elder care and in the health care sectors will decrease equally significantly. Europe already faces the challenges that this situation poses - and one of the measures that can serve to counter the rapid changes that we see, is the development of new technologies that can assist the elderly in their daily lives.

In the Region of Southern Denmark we seek to foster commercial opportunities for companies with the capacity to supply these technologies in the form of products and solutions to assist or automate tasks in the health and welfare sector. The region is especially known for its strong positions in the areas of robot technology, telemedicine and ICT.

The implementation of ICT will continue to expand into new fields and this makes new demands on citizens to continue the development of their skills throughout life - and the most dramatic development often occurs in areas that are unfamiliar to many elderly citizens. Technology itself can be an insurmountable obstacle for free communication and access to information - an obstacle that places the elderly at risk of becoming excluded from the modern society.

Chairman of the Region of Southern Denmark, Carl Holst: “The future commercial potential in this field is very promising and we are in close collaboration with the private enterprises in the region in the various projects. In the public sector we strive to improve and rethink the services that we offer our citizens. The partnership with a public body offers a clear commercial potential for growth for private enterprises and nowhere more so than in the development of solutions and products in the field of welfare technologies”

Carl Holst continues: “-One of the major challenges relating to welfare technology is to ensure that the technological solutions are designed so that it is the end-user and not the technology itself that is in primary focus. This is the point of departure for the Region's focused involvement in welfare technology.”