A workshop will take place on July 16th at the CASS Business School in London, to discuss ‘A rating and review scheme for assistive technology: What will build trust for consumers?’. This was led by the SALT project ‘Sustainable Business Models for Assistive Living Technologies and Services’ (www.saltproject.co.uk), which is supported by funding from the Economic and Social Research Council and Technology Strategy Board. The project is led by Newcastle Business School of Newcastle University with partners from Age UK, CASS Business School (City University, London), Critical Data, Cyber Moor, Docobo, Intra Health, Limbs Alive, Manus Neurodynamica, RTC North, Smartcare ADL and the Years Ahead partnership.
The workshop was put on due to the premise that most of the trials of assisted living technologies have been small scale pilots and that there is therefore a need to find ways to scale up implementations so that many more members of the community will benefit.
The rationale for the SALT project is that existing health and social care institutions have insufficient capacity and resources to meet demand from the ageing population. The digital revolution has created opportunities for new products and services and new ways of doing business by private, voluntary and public sector organisations. SALT brings together multidisciplinary researchers with practitioners from business, health and social care services, government agencies, third sector organisations and user groups to develop innovative, workable, scalable and sustainable solutions.
The main objectives of the SALT project are to design new business models for scalable assistive technologies and services and to understand the factors that promote or inhibit people living in the community from making use of such technologies. The project is therefore looking to thereby promote sustainable market development for independent healthy living. The project also seeks to understand the factors that promote or inhibit the uptake, use and integration of assistive technologies for older people living in the community from a user-centred perspective. The project is due for completion in February 2014.
