Health and well-being of the elderly is not only a societal challenge but also as growth opportunity by bringing innovation closer to senior citizens. 

Local and regional governments involved in the I-CARE-SMART project are committed to act as facilitators of innovation. They aim to offer an open space for co-creation. For that they will exploit existing channels through which elderly citizens are currently reached (e.g. the care system, senior communities, social networks).

Together with regional partners, there will be new quadruple helix innovation ecosystems that will create huge potentials for promoting innovation through a better understanding of user needs. 

The project will deliver a comprehensive toolset with practical guidance on how to engage seniors and businesses in user-focused co-creation and open innovation. The development of innovative solutions together with final users will be piloted in interactive co-creation sessions and living-lab tests. Additionally, the project will create a “SilverStar” platform to facilitate co-creation processes across borders.

Increasing capacities of CE regions to facilitate user-focused innovation in elderly care.

Responsible partner - University of Applied Sciences for Economy, Technics and Culture.

WPT1 gathers knowledge and develops methodologies to enhance the capacities of Central European regions to boost user-focused innovation
in elderly care by efficiently engaging seniors and businesses in a tailor-made co-creation process. Partners establish 3 Transnational Working Groups:

1)Senior Engagement ;

2)Business Engagement;

3)Co-Creation & Open Innovation.
TWG members conduct regional analyses including focus group interviews, consultations with Associated Partners, experts etc.

Tasks:

- to map existing channels towards the elderly, businesses and existing linkages and cooperation mechanisms among innovation actor;

- to collect regional and European good practices for mobilizing the elderly, businesses and for
co-creation & open innovation methods; 

- to reveal key barriers and success factors (all TWGs).

Bottom-up implementation of S3s through quadruple helix based co-creation rocess in elderly care

Responsible partner - Budapest University of Technology and Economics. 

The respective regions and members delegated by business, academia, care providers, seniors and S3
responsible organisations will receive training on the tools developed in WPT1. Those experts will adapt them to the regional context to implement a series of co-creation based activities with effective involvement of seniors and businesses:

1) Unmet needs of the elderly are revealed using co-creation techniques.

2) A joint transnational call for innovative solutions is launched and implemented regionally to address the revealed unmet needs (SilverStar Challenge). Active regional campaigns ensure an
effective out-reach to targeted businesses.

3) Selected solutions enter the regional pilot co-creation process to help their validation with actual user feedback, in the form of quadruple-helix-based co-creation sessions and living-lab-type real-life tests.
The process helps to nurture innovations with high user-acceptance, thus contributes to the bottom-up implementation of S3s. 

Boosting quadruple-helix-based
transnational collaboration to
exploit the “silver economy” in CENTRAL EUROPE

Responsible partner SI4life Science and Business together to improve the quality of life for Seniors and People with disabilities.

WPT3 is responsible to design and to implement the SilverStar Platform, a Transnational Open Innovation Platform for Smart Elderly Care. The platform will support (i) the visibility of the identified innovative solutions and (ii) the creation of a virtual community to encourage and facilitate transnational collaboration and co-creation of innovative solutions for elderly care.

Additional outcomes of this thematic work package are the Transnational Network, i.e. the I-CARE-SMART Network,  and the Joint Strategy for the network.

The I-CARE-SMART network of stakeholders in elderly care makes the commitments to continue their cooperation and to jointly maintain the SilverStar Platform. It will include partners, supporting partners, and cooperation with 3^rd parties as well as existing networks in the field.

The Joint Strategy outlines future actions to sustain and scale up the platform and to roll out project results to regions with similar S3 objectives.

Expected results

As a result of I-CARE-SMART, improved cooperation and sustainable linkages will be established among quadruple helix (QH) actors of CE regions, to promote innovation for better health & well-being of the elderly. 

In I-CARE-SMART

we bring together the Research & Development sector, Business sector, Health & Social Service Provider sector, the Elderly Community under the coordination of the Local Municipality to start a long-term co-creation and cooperation in order to integrate the identified needs of both the elderly as individuals and the elderly (health & social) service providers as institutes into each phase of the innovation cycle for SMART solution (planning, developing, prototype, validation, marketing and follow-up).