SHAPES Marketplace: Transparency, Trust and Fair Competition in the Healthy Ageing Market.

Access to digital health and care solutions and services that promote healthy ageing, independent living, and ageing in place is limited due to significant market barriers and challenges. The SHAPES project addresses the challenge of ageing populations by developing a sociotechnical ecosystem comprising a variety of health and care digital solutions, tools and services to enable and facilitate active, independent, and healthy ageing at home. Within the SHAPES project, the SHAPES Marketplace serves as a one-stop-shop for digital solutions and services designed for the Silver Economy that target the smart and healthy ageing and independent living markets. Delivering a dynamic catalogue of health and care digital solutions and services, the Marketplace promotes a transparent expansion of a trusted market offer on digital solutions and services for healthy ageing and independent living on a pan-European scale, thereby preventing vendor lock-in and enhancing the agile and fair competitiveness of the health and care industry, particularly in Europe. This paper introduces the SHAPES Marketplace and considers its function as a market driver to raise awareness on the benefits and impact of health and care digital solutions and services, as well as to shape the healthy ageing market, upholding the Systems-Market for Assistive and Related Technologies (SMART) Thinking Matrix to stimulate transparency, trust and fair competition.

Implementation of a pan-European ecosystem and an interoperable platform for Smart and Healthy Ageing in Europe: An Innovation Action research protocol.

As life expectancy continues to increase in most EU Member States, smart technologies can help enable older people to continue living at home, despite the challenges accompanying the ageing process. The Innovation Action (IA) SHAPES 'Smart and Healthy Ageing through People Engaging in Supportive Systems' funded by the EU under the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (grant agreement number 857159) attends to these topics to support active and healthy ageing and the wellbeing of older adults. This protocol article outlines the SHAPES project's objectives and aims, methods, structure, and expected outcomes. SHAPES seeks to build, pilot, and deploy a large-scale, EU-standardised interoperable, and scalable open platform. The platform will facilitate the integration of a broad range of technological, organisational, clinical, educational, and social solutions. SHAPES emphasises that the home is much more than a house-space; it entails a sense of belonging, a place and a purpose in the community. SHAPES creates an ecosystem - a network of relevant users and stakeholders - who will work together to scale-up smart solutions. Furthermore, SHAPES will create a marketplace seeking to connect demand and supply across the home, health and care services. Finally, SHAPES will produce a set of recommendations to support key stakeholders seeking to integrate smart technologies in their care systems to mediate care delivery. Throughout, SHAPES adopts a multidisciplinary research approach to establish an empirical basis to guide the development of the platform. This includes long-term ethnographic research and a large-scale pan-European campaign to pilot the platform and its digital solutions within the context of seven distinct pilot themes. The project will thereby address the challenges of ageing societies in Europe and facilitate the integration of community-based health and social care. SHAPES will thus be a key driver for the transformation of healthcare and social care services across Europe.

Shaping the Future of Digitally Enabled Health and Care.

People generally need more support as they grow older to maintain healthy and active lifestyles. Older people living with chronic conditions are particularly dependent on healthcare services. Yet, in an increasingly digital society, there is a danger that efforts to drive innovations in eHealth will neglect the needs of those who depend on healthcare the most-our ageing population. The SHAPES (Smart and Healthy Ageing through People Engaging in Supportive Systems) Innovation Action aims to create an open European digital platform that facilitates the provision of meaningful, holistic support to older people living independently. A pan-European pilot campaign will evaluate a catalogue of digital solutions hosted on the platform that have been specifically adapted for older people. 'Medicines control and optimisation' is one of seven themes being explored in the campaign and will investigate the impact of digital solutions that aim to optimise medicines use by way of fostering effective self-management, while facilitating timely intervention by clinicians based on remote monitoring and individualised risk assessments powered by artificial intelligence. If successful, the SHAPES Innovation Action will lead to a greater sense of self-sufficiency and empowerment in people living with chronic conditions as they grow older.