Objectives of the Assistive Living Technology and Skills (ALTAS) project: The ALTAS project addresses the shortfall of assistive living technology (ALT) training courses for health and social care staff that will ultimately enable their clients and patients to benefit from smart solutions to live independently, self-care and improve their health and well-being. Key objectives are to: (1) develop a recognised standard, curriculum, course and qualification that will give professionals an incentive to add to their knowledge and skills; (2) stimulate demand for and increase the uptake of innovation through stakeholder engagement and co-creation of course development ; (3) provide the opportunity to continuously update the curricula and standards by linking the professionals to a strong knowledge cluster. Strategic relevance: Across Europe, quadruple helix partnerships are striving to scale up smart solutions to address the demographic challenge of an ageing population. But, successful scaling of innovative solutions especially for the elderly with long-term conditions remain patchy. The difficulty in securing health and social care professionals’ engagement to utilize, help people to use and accept the adoption of assistive living technologies is a key obstacle to supporting people to live independently for longer. Partly, this is due to the shortfall of training opportunities for practitioners in assistive living technologies along with the lack of a recognised qualification for competence in their suitability and use. As a result, awareness of what assistive living technologies are available, what they can do, when they are suitable, who could benefit from them and in what way remains low amongst front line health and care workers and their managers. Moreover, at European level, it has been recognized that there is no standard nor consensus as to what should be taught. Methods and actions: The ALTAS project intends to plug this important gap. It will develop, test and evaluate ALTAS standards, curriculum and VET course that can provide health and social care professionals with the knowledge, skills and confidence to utilise, deploy and recommend appropriate ALT devices, technologies and related services. It will also create an accreditation scheme that will be a key step on the road to a national and European- recognised accredited qualification. ALTAS will be delivered in 3 phases: Design, Delivery and Evaluation. The design phase will define the standards, develop a curriculum and generate initial content for course delivery. Needs analysis and stakeholder engagement will support the development of the curriculum and alignment with specific cross-cultural and health and social care characteristics within each partner country and region will be a key principle. Using an iterative learning methodology, the delivery phase will develop an assessment framework, build the training course with the trainers and pilot an eCourse in one region. This phase will also develop and deploy a toolkit to support training course implementation. The assessment framework will form the basis for an accredited qualification, planned to lead to European wide accreditation. In parallel the course and e-course, developed by ALTAS training organisations, will be launched to VET trainers during a 5-day coaching session incorporating different modes of delivery. The course, once developed, will be deployed to 45 trainees each in UK, Spain, Norway and Denmark over 4 days during a 7 month period. In parallel, the eCourse will be deployed in one region to test the right balance for blended learning and assess the most suitable platforms for its deployment. The toolkit will be built on the project website. The third phase will focus on evaluating the course and assessing its impact on the target group and external stakeholders. During this phase, the curriculum and course will also be tested in a Central and an Eastern European country with differing cultural and health and care system characteristics. A sustainability plan laying the foundations for the future of the project and its intellectual outputs will be delivered towards the end of the project. Outcomes and impact: The ALTAS project will deliver a fit-for-purpose standards and curriculum, assessment framework and course materials for health and social care professionals. These deliverables will be supported by an eCourse, a course deployment toolkit and a comprehensive evaluation report. The ALTAS project is expected to (1) raise awareness and increase knowledge of ALT for front-line health and social care staff and their managers, (2) increase motivation in staff to take ALT courses, (3) increase staff willingness and confidence to promote ALT, (4) increase interest in the ALT workforce to exchange and share good practice across Europe and (5) increase collaboration and cooperation between training organisations and ALT suppliers.

One of the key challenges facing the European society is the demographic change and the effect that this risks to have on the European health care systems. Rising life expectancy and the ageing population, which will increase the number of elderly people that need health care, will put our health systems under further stress, including health workforce shortages and insufficient public funding.In order to respond to this challenge, a wide range of eHealth solutions are being developed and proposed, with the objective of 1) ensuring good quality care, despite less resources available, 2) supporting health care workers to ensure more transparent communication channels and 3) empowering patients and relatives to better participate in their own health.An overall European challenge is that many of these solutions do not reach full implementation stage because; a) the solutions have too often not been developed in close collaboration with the health staff; b) lack of overall digital competences and specific eHealth literacy within the staff and c) there are barriers to changing organisational practices, pathways and models of working that enable smart solutions to be deployed.The Digital & Innovation Skills Helix = The DISH project will develop three different concepts; 1) a concept for a “learning innovation unit” based on a triple helix partnership to ensure better development and uptake of eHealth solutions, 2) a concept for on the job training, providing staff in the health care sector with better eHealth competences and 3) a concept to assess and acknowledge skills and comptences, which ensures the recognition and mobility of health care staff.The project includes a preparation phase, a development phase and a testing phase, where health care providers, eductional institutions and clusters work closely together, which ensures that the deliverables are developed as close to the real needs as possible and to improve the level of exploitation of results.