How can we design smart age-friendly living and working environments? How can Artificial Intelligence (AI) help to improve health outcomes and quality of life of ageing workers? Can ICT help ageing workers efficiently overcome difficulties and adapt to the rapidly changing work conditions? Just some of the key questions being explored by the pan-European project, ‘SmartWork’, which launched in Athens on 10-11 January 2019.
SmartWork will address a key challenge facing today’s older generation, as they are living and working longer than their predecessors: the design and realisation of age-friendly living and working spaces.
A Worker-Centric AI System
The SmartWork holistic approach will support active and healthy ageing at work for older office workers, through a suite of smart services, building a Worker-Centric AI System for work ability sustainability. In other words, keeping ageing people working for longer by supporting them with unobtrusive sensing and monitoring of their health, behaviour, cognitive and emotional status, and responding to their needs.
Benefits for older workers, employers and carers
The SmartWork AI system will enable decision support for personalised interventions for the maintenance/ improvement of work ability, including optimized services for on-the-fly work flexibility coordination, seamless transfer of the work environment between different devices and different environments (home, office, on the move), and on-demand personalized training.
SmartWork services and modules will also empower the employer to improve the efficiency and productivity of office worker teams with AI decision support tools.
Moreover, formal and informal carers will be able to continuously monitor the overall health status and risks of the people they care for, thus providing full support to the older office worker for sustainable, active and healthy ageing.
Co-creation with end users
A key component of SmartWork design will be the co-creation and evaluation of the SmartWork system with the active engagement of all end-users (55-65 aged office workers, employers and carers) in real-world settings, with special attention to ethics, privacy and security. This will allow the project team to develop scalable services adaptable to the worker’s profile, and pave the way for a successful deployment and exploitation of digital health flexible work practices suiting also the needs of other age groups.
About SmartWork
SmartWork is a truly pan-European project led by BYTE Computer S.A., and brings together a highly skilled and complementary consortium of ten expert organisations from across 8 countries. The consortium is well-balanced in terms of involvement from ICT industry, academia and research as well as public and non-profit organisations:
SmartWork has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 826343. The three-year project began on 01 January 2019.
