Bulgaria: Innovative welfare technology for elderly people

The Hospice “Carica Eleonora-Varna” is a small medical care company in Bulgarian. The company has recently received funding from the Norway Grants for a project to providing monitoring, emergency alert and fall detection to elderly people in Bulgaria.

Cooperation with Smart Innovation Norway AS

The project will be implemented in partnership with Smart Innovation Norway AS. Smart Innovation Norway is a small company from Halden, which is a part of NCE Smart Energy Cluster. It has more than 30 employees (researchers and innovators) involved in projects related to smart cities and communities, as well as incubation. Smart Innovation Norway AS has experience in monitoring of elderly people at home through sensors for measuring some indirect indicators. The Norwegian partner will be involved in the tests and validation of the results in North-East Bulgaria.

Innovative welfare technology

The project aims to help provide elderly people in Bulgaria with health monitoring and an alert system that can mobilise the Emergency Medical Services, detect falling and still have the freedom of mobility with service coverage everywhere. Currently, the support service for elderly people in Bulgaria relies on someone taking care of them when they are leaving at home or to stay in a home for elderly people or in a hospice.

The project develops an innovative welfare technology service representing a remote monitoring at home and emergency alert system to help elderly and persons with disabilities to become more independent and reliant.

The remote monitoring and emergency alert system will include a specially designed device, a sort of smart watch, that will collect bio-data on health, physical and motion, from the users and send them in a real time to the servers via the mobile networks. The system provides an IAn IT platform that will process and analyse the data from users with the latest big data technology and machine learning algorithms. It also includes interfaces for the visualisation of the data for the hospice, the relatives and the observing doctor.

The SMEs Growth Programme in Bulgaria

The project is supported by Norway through the Norway Grants. See more opportunities under the SMEs Growth Programme in Bulgaria.

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