ProACT Partner NetwellCASALA at Dundalk Institute of Technology nominated for a prestigious EU Innovation Radar Award

3 October 2017

ProACT Partner NetwellCASALA are among the nominees for the EU Innovation Radar Prize, a competition launched by the European Commission to identify Europe’s top future innovators and their innovations. NetwellCASALA is a Research Centre for Ageing based in Dundalk Institute of Technology (DkIT) in Ireland, leading both national and international research and innovation to enhance and empower longer living in smarter places. They are one of 12 partners on the ground-breaking ProACT Horizon 2020 project, funded by the European Union and coordinated by Trinity College Dublin.
Only ten EU funded projects have been shortlisted for a prestigious Innovation Radar Award this year within the Technology for Society category.  These projects are all considered to offer outstanding innovation for research.
The innovation which has been recognised by the awards body is the SIMS [Subject Information Management System] platform which was developed by NetwellCASALA and is currently being used as an integral part of the ProACT system.  ProACT when complete will be the first cloud-based, digital solution of its kind in Ireland and Europe to specifically support home based integrated care and self-management for older adults with multiple chronic health conditions.
The SIMS platform was designed in-house by Dr. Julie Doyle, Senior Researcher at NetwellCASALA and Shane Gavin Senior Software Developer.
“We are really delighted by this nomination” said Rodd Bond, Director of NetwellCASALA “ProACT is a game changing project, demonstrating how older people with multiple chronic conditions, with the support of their care network, can better manage their health and wellbeing from home.  It is a fantastic project to be involved in and it is wonderful that the SIMS platform, which we developed here in Dundalk, is seen as one of Europe’s highest potential innovations in EU funded research and innovation projects” he added.
The shortlisted projects will be voted on over the next two weeks and the winner will be announced in mid-October.    Please get behind this outstanding EU funded innovation and take a minute to vote for NetwellCASALA by either scanning this barcode which will take you to the on-line voting icon or by going to https://ec.europa.eu/futurium/en/tech-society/netwellcasala where you can also vote. 

 

Note to Editor:

NetwellCASALA is a Research Centre in Dundalk Institute of Technology, specialising in researching innovations to support Ageing in Place (i.e. technologies and programmes which can help older people to live at home for longer).
The research centre is very successful, having received over €12 million in funding over the past ten years to support its key projects.  These include the Great Northern Haven, assisted living apartment complex in Barrack Street Dundalk, ProACT a European Commission Horizon 2020 project, MAESTRO an EU Ambient Assisted Living Innovation project and Google’s ThinkTech project along with several key applied research projects and social innovation programmes.
The innovation which has been shortlisted for the Innovation RADAR Award is the SIMS [Subject Information Management System].  This system, developed by in-house by NetwellCASALA,  is an intelligent information aggregator which allows information from several sources (sensors, blood pressure monitors, survey’s etc.) to be collated and presented to both the older person and their health care network to allow them to better manage their health and wellbeing. 
The SIMS platform is being used as an integral part of ProACT, a European Commission Horizon 2020 project, which aims to develop an eco-system to integrate a wide variety of new and existing technologies to improve and advance home-based integrated care for older people with two or more diseases (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, chronic heart failure, diabetes and coronary heart disease).  
The eco-system is centred on the older person and consists of homecare, hospital care, community care and social support networks.  ProACT is a consortium led by Trinity College and includes IBM Research, AIAS, Netwell CASALA, IMEC, Tyndall National Institute, Treelogic, Phillips UK, Home Instead AAATE, EASPD and ASP di Bologna.  The project started in January 2016 and is due to complete mid 2019.
For more information on Netwell CASALA please go to www.netwellcasala.org and for more information on ProACT please go to www.proact2020.eu or contact Dr Caoimhe Hannigan, ProACT Project Manager (caoimhe.hannigan@tcd.ie)