Our objective is to inform e-health policymaking towards better health outcomes through a bottom-up evidence-based holistic approach. BETTEReHEALTH will set up four Regional Hubs based in Tunisia, Ghana, Ethiopia and Malawi, already endorsed by each country's Ministry of Health. Each hub will organise coordination and networking activities (including two regional workshops) involving national and regional actors. We are planning actions to address three aspects related to successful e-health: human, technical and public policy factors. We will also organise two international workshops to promote the cooperation and networking between Europe and Africa. BETTEReHEALTH will create open access registries by collecting information from African countries regarding e-health policies and existing e-health solutions. The registries will be used to identify best-practices and produce useful knowledge regarding e-health implementation. The knowledge produced in registries, together with the input from the other activities will be synthesized into e-health policy roadmaps and strategic implementation plans for better e-health services for the four countries hosting Regional Hubs, but will also be of high relevance for other African countries. The strengths of BETTEReHEALTH are the diversity of the involved partners, which will contribute to an interdisciplinary approach (including health, technical and policymaking actors), the evidence-based approach guaranteed by the academic and research partners, and the strong local involvement ensured by the four Regional Hubs. BETTEReHEALTH will increase the level of international cooperation in e-health, inform and strengthen end-user communities and policy makers in making the right decisions for the successful implementation of e-health, and lead to increased opportunities for stakeholders in Africa and Europe with the overall aim of better health outcomes through better healthcare accessibility and higher quality.

The PROGRESSIVE project will provide a dynamic and sustainable framework for standards and standardisation around ICT for AHA. The project is pan-European but also draw on wider international experience – especially in the contexts of interoperability and standards harmonisation. As attitudes towards ageing change there is recognition of the importance of older people’s engagement. Engagement can empower. It can encourage and facilitate greater involvement of older people in economic and political life as well as within communities and families. It follows that the inclusion of older people must be integral to ways of thinking about standards for ICT for AHA. Traditional top-down, clinically driven approaches to standards often fail to recognise the importance of such engagement and overlook the opportunity of co-production approaches. A strongly ethical approach is adopted in the PROGRESSIVE project. It uses responsible research and innovation (RRI) as a key reference point. The new way of thinking adopted involves a dialogue that moves from what can be a formulaic standards and service ‘delivery’ model in favour of provision in ways that take fuller account of needs and choices of older people. The PROGRESSIVE project recognises four domains - age friendly communities; reformed and empowering services; accessible, affordable and supportive homes; and active, health and empowered older people and 22 fields (Fig 1). Within these it acknowledges the commercial opportunities of the ‘silver economy’ - both as a market for goods and services and as a milieu where older people can be assets and active contributors. The PROGRESSIVE project will establish parameters by which good practice in standards and the standardisation process around ICT for AHA can be identified. A platform to be developed will promote discussion and debate. The work will lay the foundation for standards that will be increasingly fit for purpose – with potential benefits to all our lives.

Ageing presents one of the greatest socio-economic challenges of the 21st century. According to estimates more than 20% of Europeans will be 65 or older by 2025. Reacting to related puzzlements of demographic shifts and ageing in general, and guaranteeing the availability of the required structure to help Europe utilise the active and healthy ageing sector’s opportunities, the EU has devoted a high level of resources to ICT projects in the field of active and healthy ageing. As such a considerable number of open source platforms for the development of innovative solutions in the AHA domain have been created. These platforms, such as universAAL and FIWARE and several others, are operational on similar services within the same domain, either competing or complementing each-other, urging for more interoperability among them. Responding to the numerous critical voices that have been raised due to the persisting fragmentation of the active and healthy ageing market; and the lack of interoperability of the various solutions deployed or difficulties with the large scale uptake of the platforms by their targeted users, the aim of the PlatformUptake.eu project is to observe, analyse and understand the whole ecosystem of open service platforms and their related networks, and depict a picture describing the whole ecosystem with its achievements and potentials, targeting all user groups while also generating synergies among platforms and their related projects in the AHA and IoT domain. For a period of 26 months, the PlatformUptake.eu project will assess the societal impact of existing platforms, create monitoring and evaluation toolkits, collect successful user stories and best practices, promote interoperability and define guidelines for a common evolution of such platforms within existing policy frameworks and initiatives. Seeking to support the large-scale uptake of the platforms, PlatformUptake.eu proposes the creation of an online information hub which provides descriptive and support materials on all existing platforms, the organisation of several stakeholder events, as well as a Massive Open Online Course for promoting synergies, knowledge exchange and a common understanding among all stakeholders in the Active and Healthy Ageing market.