Successful AAL Consultant Pilot Trainings organized by Wifi in Austria

The pilot training was conducted in Austria on June 12th and 13th, 2014.  Qualified health care workers and nurses in nursing home facilities, a coordinator of regional home health care, teaching staff from the health and medical care branch, an occupational therapist with college degree in Health Assistance Engineering and an education manager from the health field at WIFI Austria were invited to discuss the developed training programme.   

On the first day the curriculum of the project management team engAGEnt was introduced and the second day was spent by holding intensive discussions, gathering feedback and compiling suggestions. 

It became quite evident that in the Austrian health care branch, attention is already being focused upon ambient assisted living.  It does however, lack knowledge and information regarding:

1) Technical Innovation 

• Future course studies should therefore also allow for haptic/manual practice. 

• The focus should lie on future developments;  prospects for the future, innovation, and  recent developments need to be depicted – what currently exists is already known. 

2) Financing 

• What are the financial implications of things such as the implementation of AAL in public institutions (such as hospitals), other laws, policies and procurement?

• Which kind of funding and subsidy opportunities are available for the implementation of AAL measures in nursing home facilites? 

The results of the pilot training in Austria show that a great interest exists in AAL topics, evidenced by the increasing demand for the funding of AAL measures. At the same time however,  the discussions indicated that the target group for new AAL training programmes in Austria have to be reconsidered. In addition, it is necessary that these fields of activity be clearly defined, due to the rising opportunity currently being found in construction, trade and in safety & security consulting in new and renovated buildings. 

WIFI International has interest in using the content for its own WIFI product development. In order to be able to offer a suitable and market-relevant training program to a specific target group, the feedback from the participants was very helpful. It will contribute significantly to further development.