World Ageing Festival, hosted by Ageing Asia, will be held at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre next week, May 6-10.
This event is a combination of 12th Asia Pacific Eldercare Innovation Awards 2024 and the Ageing Asia Innovation Exhibition, and indeed includes six special events – Innovation Forum, Geronpreneurship Innovation festival, Active Ageing Seminar, Ageing Asia exhibition, Eldercare Innovation and Policy Roundtable – while showcasing knowledge and services for active ageing, health & wellness, home & community care, technology and assistive living.
This global event gathers innovations from around the world and has more than 100 speakers and exhibitors.
This Festival has been part of our conference calendar for almost ten years. It is a wonderful opportunity to learn about innovations and new solutions for the care models, but also to share the knowledge we have in active ageing, and the opportunities that our products bring. It is always wonderful to catch up with old friends, but also to make new connections and create new projects.
With HUR having more than 10.000 installations in five continents, it is great to catch up with ourglobal team as in this image where you can see our CEO Lena Smeds-Furu (seated) surrounded by our teams from Singapore, Malaysia and Australia.
Global Team HUR at the 2023 event, from left to right: Dr Jillian Yeoh, Managing Director at IMM Healthcare, Malaysia; Lena Smeds-Furu, CEO, HUR, Finland ; Sheila Wyatt, Account manager, HUR Solutions, Singapore; Annika Wohlstrom, Sales Director, HUR Solutions, Singapore; Dr Tuire Karaharju-Huisman, Research Lead, HUR Australia
This year the theme of the event is "Redefining Care: Activating Communities of The Future" really shifting the focus to the future of care, with an emphasis on the role of technology as part of care.
This is verified in the opening keynote panel discussion titled “Future of Age Tech Innovations for Successful Ageing in place” with the specific topics listed as:
- What are the roles technology will play in the future long term care eco-system for the 100 year client?
- What are the game changing strategies technology innovators can take to change the future of ageing?
- What are the technology innovations that will increase our ability to age-in-place?
- How will new trends in technology benefit ageing and longevity?
The invited international panel consists of healthcare and innovation leaders, and also two Australian industry representatives, Sue Thomson, CEO of McLean Care and iAge Health, as well as HUR Australia’s Dr Tuire Karaharju-Huisman.
The Use of technology is increasing. With hundreds of application and devices available, World Health Organisation (WHO) launched the Global Initiative on Digital Health in February. The purpose of the initiative is “to amplify and align resources toward country-led digital health transformation through strengthened collaboration and knowledge exchange”.
This initiative also aims to facilitate WHO’s Global strategy on Digital Health 2020-2025. It is important that we start collaborating in order to maximise the benefits of technology on health. In an article published by Australian Ageing Agenda, chair of the Aged Care Industry Information Technology Council, George Margelis, stated that this initiative
“is potentially a commercial opportunity for Australian software vendors giving them the opportunity to expand their market and thus fund further development. It also provides opportunities for a larger regional digital health workforce – which can have flow-on benefits.”
Last week also saw the publication of a new book, “Technology and Ageing Well – The potential for digital and assistive technologies to improve support for older people”, by Professor Kevin Doughty, who has held the position as a visiting professor of digital transformation of Care Services. Professor Doughty has published wonderful texts on the use of technology. In a recent blog he stated that it is important that the progress of digital technologies in health is transferred from reacting to preventing illness and falls.
One of the key aspects of increasing health and decreasing the likelihood of disease is exercise. We are happy to announce that a HUR is part of an innovation project where our exercise data is seen as part of the total health data, allowing for the analysis on the effect of exercise on total wellbeing. We will share more news on this project later.
Technology allows us to place the person in the centre. It
- simplifies some tasks and leaves more time for the human interaction
- monitors the actions and provides evidence for interventions
- allows for actions, reactions and interactions when used properly
- allows people to age with better quality of life, it allows everyone to age in place, safely
If you are attending the conference, please come and meet us to say hello, or to discuss what exercise solutions might suit your facility.
