Towards a Unified Ambient Assisted Living and Personal Health Environment

Due to the changing demographics, residing and being cared in the own familiar environment is becoming the more attractive alternative for an ever increasing portion of the population in contrast to an institutionalized inpatient setting. Despite its tremendous market potential, AAL (Ambient Assisted Living) is still on the cusp of a mainstream break-through. A lack of viable business models is considered almost unanimously to be the greatest market obstacle to a broad implementation of innovative AAL systems. This paper highlights possible explanations for this deficit and shows why the AAL community has yet to arrive at joint solutions based on a unified AAL reference platform. Furthermore, this paper describes the enormous potential of AmI and AAL, as the first real opportunity for their success is provided through universAAL and AALOA