Our mission

Age-friendly environments, or more specific, smart healthy age-friendly environments, promote independent living, digitalization, social inclusion, and more health and wellbeing. We aim to enable the implementation of smart healthy age-friendly environments at local, regional or national level in European countries by providing research, networks, training and support to citizens, municipalities, companies and academia.

We are actively involved in many (European) research and education projects, such as Erasmus+ and Horizon2020. Our long-term experiences with health, politics and IT-solutions are supportive to bring these projects to successful results.

Smart Healthy Age-Friendly Environments (SHAFE)

To live and participate in society as inhabitant, worker or volunteer, it is necessary that the physical and social working and living environments are usable, accessible, protective and reachable. No matter if someone walks, drives, uses a walker or wheelchair, or is having hearing or vision problems. The age-friendly environments or age-friendly cities concept has been developed and launched by the World Health Organization in 2007.

With the ongoing digitization of society, new opportunities arise to foster these living and working environments. Also, digital solutions could assist to better prevent from non-communicable diseases, and to promote independent living, work till older age, favoring more health and wellbeing. Digital solutions can also be part of the solution for urged measures, such as social distancing in case of virus outbreaks. That is why we mainly focus on Smart Healthy Age-Friendly Environments (SHAFE), a concept developed in close collaboration with Cáritas Diocesana de Coimbra from Portugal.