REMOTE aims at satisfying all potential end-users, namely:

Primary End-users

The project takes into consideration the particular needs of primary end – users, i.e., elderly with specific chronic conditions, by designing multi-user controlled home environments, in order to offer the comfort, security and safety required, especially in rural and isolated areas. Aiming at autonomy, self-confidence, mobility and well-being, elderly-oriented applications and services will be designed to enhance their self-care, social interaction, and skills maintenance ability. Overall, the elderly will be supported in learning to understand their condition and live successfully with it (autonomously, yet under the remote and unobtrusive surveillance of professional carers and/or of family members and friends). Thereby, elderly people will be supported in: managing their risk factors; performing self-healthcare, such as dietary management, medicine management, going out, etc.; maintaining strong communication and interaction links with families, friends and other caregivers; in preparing for outdoor trips (for everyday shopping, visiting friends, vacations, etc.).

Secondary End-users

Building on its integrating approach, the project will provide secondary users, that is professionals, with tools for continuous monitoring run-time and history patient data and, thereupon, implementing patient-centric tele-healthcare while reducing paper work and travel required from both ends. Through the professionals front-end of the system, doctors will be able to get access to electronic medical records, real time data (transmitted through wireless and wired links) and records of the patient’s condition (body temperature, blood pressure), activity (physical activity, medication, food and water consumption), and life environment changes. Professionals will be further supported by decision support tools aiming to facilitate patient-data reviewing tasks and the generation of personalised, disease care plans and every-day feedback to the patients. All of these modules will be Web-based to enable professionals to access them at anytime and from anywhere, while a selection of them will operate effectively (through adapted interfaces) on mobile devices too.

Tertiary End-users

All the application and services developed will be supported by an open architecture that will facilitate the development and integration of new services (e.g., for additional types of chronic conditions and different disability situations) and new delivery platforms. The REMOTE technology will be derived after following a user-centred design approach that will focus on: delivering device-independent (PC, PDAs, mobile phones, etc.) interface designs able to further adapt to diverse interaction profiles; validating and thereby optimizing the derived designs by means of user-and evidence-based studies both under protected and in real contexts (project pilots in selected countries and regions of Europe), and on reviewing the cost efficiency of the proposed solutions. The consortium synthesis, with participants ranging from competent SMEs and major enterprises to user organisations, universities and research institutions, as well as its well-defined IPR procedures, further underpins the project’s concise dissemination and exploitation plans. Ultimately, accumulated knowledge and lessons learned throughout the project will be turned into appropriate forms for serving as guidelines to developers and feeding into standardisation processes, thus satisfying the cost reduction, interoperability, and standardisation requirements of tertiary end-users.