From March 16th – 20th the CAPSIL consortium comes together in the USA for several leading events we have organised to reach out to the independent living research and development community and the US based policy and funding bodies. We are doing this by having events from panel sessions with members of the European Commission to small meetings between the European Commission, CAPSIL and US funding agencies. I fly to Las Vegas on the 15th and then to Washington DC on the evening of the 17th, I fly back to Dublin on the evening of the 20th, so it’s a packed week of events.

On the March 17 at 1-2pm in Bally’s – Las Vegas 4 (South Tower – Third Floor) CAPSIL with host a panel session on Technologies for Successful Aging. This panel is part of the Aging in America conference, the 2009 Annual Conference of the American Society on Aging and the National Council on Aging. This panel includes an Overview of CAPSIL, State of the Art of Technology in Aging in the EU, US and Asia along with our Roadmap – Recommendations for the Future.

From the 18th to the 20th of March the CAPSIL consortium comes together in Washington DC for our 4th General Assembly, 4th working session along with a very large program of events with US based funding and decision makers. Our 3 days of events are being hosted at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Rockville Maryland.

The CAPSIL consortium will be holding our 4th general assembly during this time along with further time devoted to roadmap development. Over the course of three days CAPSIL will host bilateral meetings between representatives from the EU with representatives from the US. Those from the EU include, members of CAPSIL, representatives of the Delegation of the European Commission in Washington DC, representatives of the European Commission, Information Society & Media D-G and representatives of the Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) Joint Programme. Those from the US for example include, representatives of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), specifically the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). Further meetings with the NSF and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering will happen during this three day period.

The goal for these bilateral meetings is to further understand the activities underway in each area focussed on independent living supported by technology and to strengthen the opportunities for EU and US researchers to collaborate. There are many funded and unfunded research and development programs in the EU, US and Japan and if the agencies can aid, rely and build on each others efforts then the collective efforts of not just one region but all can be brought to bear on the challenges in independent living.

I have recently become the UCD PI for an EU Support Action CAPSIL we coordinate. CAPSIL is an ‘International Support of a Common Awareness and Knowledge Platform for Studying and Enabling Independent Living’. Our first kick off meeting is in London on April 10th with follow up meetings in Japan, Boston, Oregon and Ireland.

The aging of society is the single most important aspect of health care in the 21st century. Many intriguing ICT solutions are being developed within the EU, USA, and Japan for helping older people remain independent longer. However, these solutions tend to be fragmented and heterogeneous. The CAPSIL Coordinating Support Action (CSA) team is a strategic international coalition of University and Industrial partners that already have extensive teams developing hardware/software/knowledge solutions to independent living based on user requirements. All partners of CAPSIL are already members of regional and national centres on aging engaged in the process of helping to establish public policy and international standards. This support action is to launch initiatives, coordinated and disseminated by a series of workshops in the US, EU, and Japan (two per year for two years), with three fundamental goals:

* to develop a detailed CAPSIL Roadmap for EU research to achieve effective and sustainable solutions to independent living based on an in-depth analysis of independent living requirements and the ICT scenarios developed or under development in the EU, as well as the US and Japan (societies where the aging of the population are currently on par or exceeding the challenges that will be found within the EU).

* to support aging research by proposing procedures to incorporate all of these diverse solutions into WiKi entries (CAPSIL WiKi). These CAPSILs will enable researchers and the ICT industry to get the information they need to quickly and easily test solutions for prolonging independent living within the many and various heterogeneous communities. Only with this knowledge will the relevance and efficacy of technological solutions be maintained and be empowered with the capability to be adapted for various cultures.

* to use the CAPSIL Roadmap and the CAPSIL Workshops to help policy makers in the US and Japan coordinate research agendas and funding efforts across the three continents.