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Technology for the Active Senior

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Book cover Active Ageing and Physical Activity

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Well-Being and Quality of Life Research ((BRIEFSWELLBEING))

Abstract

The ever-increasing ageing of the population has been under the international spotlight for the past few years. The solutions provided so far essentially focus on the health care, personal care services and pensions. However, even by reducing the growth of healthcare costs, the demographic trends and constrained state will drive health and retirement spending toward an even larger share of the economy. Therefore, one needs to go beyond the classical approaches and develop new breakthroughs for active and assisted living (AAL) by benefiting from the Information and Communications Technology (ICT). Those breakthroughs should focus on fighting the cognitive impairment, frailty and social exclusion of the ageing population, so as to improve the quality of their life and the ones surrounding them. The recent technological developments combined with other disciplines, such as behavioural, sociological, health and others, have opened a new window of opportunity. Nevertheless, and given the multidisciplinary research involved, the market has not yet provided reliable commercial solutions to appropriately address this specific challenge. This chapter outlines the general ideas and future prospects, supported by the recent rapid proliferation of ICT solutions, mainly focusing in two key approaches: (i) mixed reality serious games; and (ii) robotics. The main purpose is to foster the development of projects based on the premise that those will be ultimately beneficial, not only for the science and technological competitiveness, but also to our socio-economic welfare, increasing the sustainability and efficiency of both social and healthcare systems and, more importantly, the quality of life of the elderly.

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Notes

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    www.quicc.eu.

  2. 2.

    www.killacycle.com.

  3. 3.

    www.zboardshop.com.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ingeniarius, Ltd., Coimbra, Portugal

    Micael Santos Couceiro

  2. Faculty of Sport Sciences and Physical Education (CIDAF), University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

    Gonçalo Nuno Figueiredo Dias

Authors
  1. Micael Santos Couceiro
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  2. Gonçalo Nuno Figueiredo Dias
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Correspondence to Micael Santos Couceiro .

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Couceiro, M., Dias, G. (2017). Technology for the Active Senior. In: Active Ageing and Physical Activity. SpringerBriefs in Well-Being and Quality of Life Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52063-6_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52063-6_4

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-52062-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-52063-6

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