We are facing unprecedented demographic changes in recent years. The European population aged 60 and above is rising by more than 2 million per year. Life expectancy is increasing sharply and so is the number of people who will need care. This will lead to exploding healthcare costs. The working population is decreasing, and so we have to find solutions to the problem of how care for the elderly will be handled without enough human resources available.

Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) is a research area that seeks to develop methods to support elderly people in their everyday life.

“AAL aims to prolongate the time people can live in a decent way in their own home by increasing their autonomy and self-confidence, the discharge of monotonously everyday activities, to monitor and care for the elderly or ill person, to enhance the security and to save resources.” [Steg 2006]

 The main aim of AAL is to enable the elderly to live longer and as autonomously as possible in their familiar environment decreasing healthcare costs and helping them to reach a higher quality of life.

 A lot of AAL-projects are currently funded by International and National initiatives ( e.g. Ambient Assisted Living Joint Programme – AAL JP, Innovationspartnerschaft AAL). HBMS can be seen a a supplemet to this initiatives and is funded via the Klaus Tschira Stiftung.

[Steg 2006] Steg, H., Strese, H., Loroff, C., Hull, J., Schmidt, S.: Europe Is Facing a Demographic Challenge. Ambient Assisted Living Offers Solutions. VDI/VDE/IT, Berlin, 2006.