L’H and MWCapital promote ICT solutions to improve the quality of life of older people

• The Hospitalet City Council, in alliance with the Mobile World Capital Barcelona Foundation, is launching an international call for ICT solutions to improve the quality of life of people over 75 years old living in soles and in a situation of dependency.
• Up to 10 proposals will be selected to develop pilot projects to improve personal autonomy, automate some home resources, facilitate social life, monitor health and minimize physical risks.
• The incorporation of those solutions with the greatest impact on the Social Services portfolio will be explored.

24 May, 2022

The Hospitalet City Council, through its program L’H 6.0, and the Mobile World Capital Barcelona Foundation (MWCapital) are promoting the Tech-Senior call aimed at the challenge “How technology can help improve the autonomy and quality of life of elderly people in situations of dependence?”, aimed at technology companies.

This call seeks to identify innovative solutions to improve the quality of life of people over 75 years of age, with a recognized degree of dependence and living in soles.

The objective is to strengthen their autonomy, to extend their stay at home as long as possible and to facilitate social relations. The solutions presented must be intuitive and use simple language, with indications and steps that are easy to understand and adapted to the difficulties of movement and mental agility of the elderly.

Technology at the service of people

Technological solutions can address some of the main needs of this group: improving personal autonomy, automating some household resources, facilitating social life, monitoring health, minimizing physical risks and making the home safer.

Participation in this call is open to any company that responds to the challenge, is prepared for the implementation of the pilot project and offers concrete and measurable results.

A maximum of 10 winning proposals will be selected and their implementation in L’Hospitalet will be explored through pilot projects, where both the technology and its impact in a real context will be validated. The solutions that pass the evaluation phase will be included in the Social Services portfolio.

The consultation of the rules of the call and the submission of proposals can be made through the website https://mobileworldcapital.com/ca/form-convocatoria-tech-senior/ from May 24 until July 6. All proposals will be evaluated by a jury formed by members of the City Council of Hospitalet and MWCapital. The winning proposals will be announced in mid-July.

Progressive aging, but with quality of life

According to Idescat (2021), in l’Hospitalet 20% of the population is over 65 years of age, and of this, 26% has some degree of recognized dependency, a percentage much higher than the average for Catalonia. In addition, 33% of the people with some degree of dependency live alone, and of these, 75% are women. In this context, the public administration is looking for new ways to identify services that improve well-being, quality of life and independence.

L’H 6.0, a strategic project to promote digital inclusion

L’H 6.0 is an initiative of the Hospitalet City Council with the support of the Mobile World Capital Barcelona Foundation to carry out technological projects that put the most vulnerable citizens at the center. For this reason, it is deploying a digitalization plan for the 6 districts through actions aimed at reducing the digital divide of citizenship. One of the priority groups for the L’H 6.0 strategy is the elderly.

The collaboration agreement of the two agents contemplates a series of actions to be carried out during the years 2022 and 2023 and with a budget allocation of up to a maximum of 510,000 euros, which will contribute 50% each of the parties’.

The L’H 6.0 roadmap also includes, from July 2021, the municipal project E-senior to study technological solutions that meet the needs of the elderly. This initiative analyzes, through home visits to 300 people over 75 years old who live in soles and have recognized a degree of dependence, what devices or what technology would be useful to maintain a certain degree of autonomy and can live in their homes in the best conditions. This study will be completed before the summer, which will make it possible to implement technological solutions that will help to provide better care for these people.

The E-senior project is managed by the area of Equity, Social Rights and Human Resources and the area of Education, Innovation and Culture of the Hospitalet City Council with European co-financing. E-senior is part of a territorial specialization and competitiveness project (PECT) called 4locaLHealth. The general objective of the PECT 4locaLHealth is to promote personalized medicine as an area of territorial specialization, to advance in the development of research and healthcare innovation and to generate new economic activity, linking business and industry to improve the quality of life of citizens.